Male Fantasies, Male Fantasies: Unpacking the Armie Hammer Scandal

In her 1989 book, “Toward a Feminist Theory of State” — which serves as a feminist analysis of inequality, politics, sexuality, and law — feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon argues, among other things, that sexuality and eroticism (and gender) is determined by male desire and that what defines male sexual arousal is acts of dominance and force.

A review of Hollywood’s pervasive rape culture, brought to light by the #MeToo movement, is enough to corroborate MacKinnon’s argument.

Recently, actor Armie Hammer — known for his role in “Call Me By Your Name” and as both of the Winklevoss twins in “The Social Network” — has become the latest Hollywood actor to be at the center of a sexual abuse scandal, with a string of allegations citing his sexual abuse, violence, and manipulation.

The allegations broke out early last week when anonymous Instagram account @houseofeffie, a survivor herself, began to share screenshots of messages that Hammer allegedly sent to herself and various other women between 2016 and 2020. In one of these screenshots, the actor allegedly writes that he is “100 percent a cannibal.” Dozens more alleged screenshots, recordings, and testimonies of conversations with the actor have since been shared online.

Ex-partner Courtney Vucekovich also came out with her own allegations shortly afterwards in an interview with Page Six where she said Hammer would talk about breaking one of her ribs so he could “barbecue and eat it.”

“He kind of captivates you and while being charming, he’s grooming you for these things that are darker and heavier and consuming. When I say consuming, I mean mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, just everything,” she said. Adding later, “I wasn’t safe.” After the relationship ended, Vucekovich said she was hospitalized for PTSD and trauma.

Hammer has denied the claims based on the unverified screenshots as “bullshit” in a statement to Variety.

That the cannibalistic aspect of the allegations was given the most attention is no surprise: The initial shock of a Hollywood mainstay allegedly wanting to eat people’s toes presents an absurdity that’s difficult to ignore. But to ignore the numerous other allegations of violence outside of cannibalism is to set the stage for yet another attractive white man to get away with alleged abuse, especially as more women continue to come out with allegations against the actor.

In the case of the Hammer allegations and the media flurry surrounding them, the stories of the women who came forward were treated more as vehicles for sensationalist headlines about Hammer’s alleged kinks than as allegations of trauma and abuse at the hands of Hammer.

In an interview with DailyMailTV, model Paige Lorenze spoke of her own experience dating Hammer for four months in late 2020. She detailed how Hammer would allegedly bite her and drink her blood whenever she had a cut — and how he used a knife to carve the letter “A” into her skin as a brand.

“His actions and behavior are dangerous and emotionally and psychologically damaging. He is saying people are kink shaming him and should not comment on his sex life, but BDSM is a smoke screen for him wanting to hurt women,” she said. “You can be just as traumatized by consensual sex. It’s unacceptable that he coerces women into agreeing to let him hurt them.”

Indeed, the conversation about Hammer has largely failed to pay attention to the toxic and long-theorized conceptions of male sexuality that the allegations against him illuminate (whether they’re true or not).

In “Toward a Feminist Theory of State,” MacKinnon writes, “the male sexual role... centers on aggressive intrusion on those with less power. Such acts of dominance are experienced as sexually arousing, as sex itself.”

In other words, male eroticism is largely driven by violence; “aggressive intrusions” on women (who, in our society, are those with less power) are sex itself as defined by male sexuality.

The fantasies Hammer allegedly held — and, at times, acted upon — are inherently and explicitly violent, if nothing else. The screenshotted messages detail rape, graphic cannibalism, blood-sucking, cutting, and other extreme and explicit fantasies in which Hammer would assert his “ownership” of his partners. Other screenshots allegedly involve Hammer and a woman talking about how she wanted him to stop whatever he was doing and he didn’t, to the point that she “tried to crawl away and cried hysterically.”

According to Lorenze, Hammer would write these violent fantasies off as representative of the BDSM community. But while BDSM (a condensed acronym for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism) and rough sex are valid when coming from a place of mutual care and respect, to claim that cannibalistic and rape-focused fantasies are simply “rough sex” is to cover for gender violence.

It’s no secret that American society in recent years — with the popularization of cultural phenomena like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” for example — has, indeed, gradually become more accepting of previously stigmatized aspects of sexuality, like kink and BDSM. Of course, this isn’t at all a bad thing. But too often, the popular conception of kink and BDSM is used not as a step towards mutual sexual liberation but as a thin veil to obscure sexual violence and abuse as a show of dominance, especially by men against women.

Take, again, the example of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” where billionaire businessman Christian Grey’s relationship with student Anastasia Steele, while written to be emblematic of BDSM, is instead deeply abusive. In one scene, when Steele threatens to leave, he threatens her back, citing that he knows her address. Her inner monologue immediately goes to the way he could beat her “seven shades.”

While the book trilogy introduced millions of Americans to non-normative sex, it did so under the misguided pretext that what determines male sexual arousal is violence. Steele doesn’t want to be Grey’s submissive, but Grey is only turned on by that and violent sex.

Speaking about her relationship with Hammer, Lorenze said, “I was his Christian Grey fantasy.”

Like Grey, Hammer is alleged to have coerced and manipulated his partners into being the targets of violent acts for the sake of his sexual arousal. Lorenze, for example, detailed that she would often be coerced into sex acts that she wasn’t comfortable with.

“Any man who is fantasizing about crushing bones, eating them, having sex with female limp bodies is a danger to all women,” Lorenze said in an interview.

Even in consensual, “vanilla” sexual relationships, sex can be violent to the point of trauma because of the very power imbalances that exist between men and women in and outside of the bedroom. And because women are socialized to subscribe to the male conception of sex and eroticism, domination and aggression are often wrongly accepted as normal conventions of sex at the expense of women. Bring in explicitly violent acts and desires like rape and cannibalism, however, and it becomes inarguably clear that domination and violence is the driving force behind too much of abusive male sexual desire — as MacKinnon argues.

The question of what society can do to address the violence of alleged abusers like Hammer is contested. Lorenze, for example, believes Hammer can be helped through therapy. The account owner of @houseofeffie, on the other hand, believes that to change him would be impossible. Regardless of Hammer’s capacity for change, however, the need to build justice for survivors is clear. That is not done by ignoring, cherry picking, or spectacularizing the experiences of survivors like the women who have come out against Hammer, but through centering the voice and agency of survivors, treating them with dignity, ensuring consequences for the abuser, and preventing further harm.

The Hammer allegations are not notable merely for their shocking nature nor should they be treated as such. Instead, they should be seen as what they are: the experiences of survivors, as well as an amplification of the way all kinds of sexual violence are too often excused and written away at the expense of its targets, especially women.

— Staff writer Sofia Andrade can be reached at sofia.andrade@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @bySofiaAndrade.