Kick-Gas 2: Another look at eproctophilia

Last year in a previous blog I examined eproctophilia (a sexual paraphilia in which people are sexually attracted to flatulence). I noted in that article that there had been no academic or clinical papers published on the topic. However, that is no longer the case as last week I had a case study published on this topic in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.  Today’s blog examines this newly published case study of Brad (a pseudonym), a 22-year old single man from Illinois (US). I’ve only selected a few bits from the full case study (so email me if you’d like to read the full account).

Brad first contacted me after he read my previous blog on eproctophilia. I asked Brad about his first experience(s) of eproctophilia. He claimed that compared to other eproctophiles who had “colorful first experiences,” that his experience was “a bit more tame than most, which is disappointing in a way.” Brad recalled that in middle school he had a crush on a particular girl. He thought “she was the most beautiful thing [he] had ever seen.” When talking with his friends, Brad recalled that one of them mentioned that the girl he had a crush on had farted in her science class. As Brad said:

“This blew my mind. Prior to that, I’d never really considered it. I knew by simple biology that girls farted, but hearing that the girl I had been fawning over was capable of such a thing sparked a strange interest in me.”

Brad first engaged in an eproctophile act at around the age of 16 or 17 years of age. He was with a male friend and up to that point he had considered himself as heterosexual. This was until he heard his male friend fart in front of him. Brad recalled:

“It was rather appealing in sound, and I found myself fixating on it. At first, I didn’t want to admit I was into his farting, but eventually I decided to experiment. I set up a bet at some point and intentionally lost, with the wager being the right to fart in the loser’s face for a week. I continued to lose such bets once every few weeks for about two years.”

I asked about his thoughts surrounding eproctophilia. He claimed to “enjoy everything about it” and had experienced it directly.

“I’m not sure how graphic of details you would like, but I have had my face farted on by both men and women, at point blank range. I like the sound and the smell. The ‘worse,’ the better. In terms of sound, I prefer a deep bubbling sound. In terms of smell, I like acrid sulfur. I prefer the farter to be clothed. I don’t particularly like seeing the anus open. It’s not revolting to me, I just prefer fabric for three reasons. Firstly, the sound tends to be better with fabric, particularly jeans or nylons. Second, the smell lingers in cloth, whereas in the nude it is a relatively quick blast of smell. Third, I like the look of butt cheeks better when they are defined by fabric.”

I asked why he preferred sulphurous farts. He said that:

“The more disgusting, the more I like it as it heightens the sense of duality. The more disgusting the fart and the prettier the lady, the more of a schism it is between the societal expectation and the reality. As for men, it’s simply more dominating for it to be a really gross fart than a mild poot.”

I asked Brad whether he was more sexually aroused when engaged in eproctophile sexual activity than when engaged in ‘normal’ sex. He then said that he may be “technically asexual” as he had no desire for actual sex (as he preferred masturbation to sexual intercourse). He was also questioned about the extent to which the eproctiphile acts were masochistic. He responded:

“Sometimes. One of my more common fantasies is receiving a fart as a reward for completing a task. I play video games, for instance, and one includes me helping a girlfriend solve a puzzle in a game. Then, while still playing, she tells me to get ready for my reward and lets one rip. There’s an idea of subservience, not necessarily masochism. An idea of being there without being the focal point, where she lets me smell her farts and rub her feet and cuddle up and such, without fussing too much over me. I enjoy all aspects, really, from the S/M standpoint in which someone dominates me by farting on me, to the subservient aspect of being like a pet or article of furniture in which she isn’t particularly dominating, just coexisting, to the aspect of dominance for myself in which I learn her closely guarded secret of what her farts sound and smell like.”

One of the more interesting things that came from interviewing Brad was that he was very forthright on what he believed about eproctophilia and other people’s perceptions of it. He said:

“Allow me to shed some light on why farting, of all things, is sexually interesting to us. First, let me mention that we are not sexually attracted to flatulence, per se. We are attracted to the person RELEASING the flatulence. Unattractive people farting, to us, is like seeing unattractive people having sex for you…For others, myself included, it is a matter of dualities. Social norm dictates that people in general, particularly females, do not fart in public, for others to hear. To see a beautiful, delicate lady passing wind is a breach of those expectations in a profound manner. That a beautiful woman is capable of producing a “disgusting” sound and smell is what attracts us, and makes us want to experience it. It can also be a matter of humanization. Again, social ideologies tend to place the beautiful, particularly women, on a pedestal of what makes a conceptual or archetypal woman. To hear her pass wind is to hear an admission of humanity, that she is the same as the rest of us. It is to learn her dark secret, the sounds and smells of her uncontrollable biological functions. This is more of a dominant matter, as it is more about wrenching her humanity into focus while society attempts to hide it. Therefore, it is not always a matter of female dominance. However, due to the internet pornography market, most producers choose to follow the dominatrix stereotype, as it is a reliable source of income and a familiar sexy medium.”

Brad was asked if he experienced any sexual pleasure from watching eproctophilia videos (such as those on YouTube). Given that smell is such an important part, I was interested to know whether ‘second-hand’ sources were less arousing. Brad responded that he did get sexual pleasure from watching such films. In fact, he added:

“While smell and the tactile sense of face sitting are important, sound is also another key factor. Being able to see that girls DO fart, or sort of live the fantasy out vicariously, is what I have to do. I suppose vanilla porn could be a good analogy. The physical sensation of sex is obviously very important. People still get aroused watching porn even though they can’t feel it, and I think it’s exactly the same with myself. When watching pornography, it’s more about the thought of it.”

Brad’s account of his early eproctophile experiences are suggestive of behavioural conditioning and/or sexual imprinting – in this case classical conditioning where being sexually aroused by an attractive women is paired with something that is not inherently sexual (in this case, flatulence) and then starts to become an erotic focus in and of itself. Brad also had very specific criteria for the behaviour to be sexually arousing (i.e., the person had to fart while fully clothed as it sounded better, and the smell was longer-lasting, and the farts had to be acrid smelling). Brad saw clear similarities between his interest in eproctophilia and being sexually aroused by watching females defecate (as he specifically noted his coprophilic tendencies in his desire to watch women on the toilet). The co-occurrence of Brad’s eproctophilia with traits of sexual masochism – such as the deliberate losing of a bet so that resulted in Brad being farted upon all week by his male friend – demonstrates that the behaviour has other paraphilic elements. A number of times, Brad mentioned the sadomasochistic elements of the eproctophilic behaviour.

According to a paper in a 2011 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dr. Lesley Terry and Dr. Paul Vasey assert that the scientific value of case studies is their utility in highlighting rare phenomena and their role in the generation of new research questions and hypotheses. The eproctophile case presented in my new case study hopefully fulfils these values. Clearly, this is just one case study and Brad is unlikely to be representative of the entire eproctophile community. Other developmental routes into eproctophilia may be possible. Further research is needed to assess the extent to which this case study is representative of eproctophiles more generally, and whether the etiological and developmental pathways are more complex than that described in this instance.

My case study also highlights the importance of the internet in recruitment of people with sexually paraphilic and/or fetishistic behaviour for academic study. Over the last decade, there have been a number of studies that have reported paraphilic behaviour by using online methodologies such as studies into zoophilia, feederism, hypoxyphilia, and sexsomnia. Without the internet, it is unlikely that my latest case study would have come to light. Brad may not have been able to contact me and I would not have been able to carry out the interview online. The online medium appears to be a particularly good medium for collecting data on unusual sexual paraphilias and fetishes as online data collection is much better for collecting sensitive compared to offline methods.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and medico-legal aspects of sexual crimes and unusual sexual practices. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Akins, C. K. (2004). The role of Pavlovian conditioning in sexual behavior: A comparative analysis of human and nonhuman animals. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 17, 241-262.

Griffiths, M. D. (2012). The use of online methodologies in studying paraphilia: A review. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 1, 143-150.

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Eproctophilia in a young adult male: A case study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, DOI 10.1007/s10508-013-0156-3

Terry, L. L. & Vasey, P. L. (2011). Feederism in a woman. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 639-645.