Deerly beloved: Animal tissue as a masturbatory aid

A couple of weeks ago I bought a secondhand copy of The Fortean Times Book of Weird Sex by Steve Moore (mainly because it cost me only one pence at an online book store). One of the stories (on pp.96-97) concerned a bizarre story of an autoerotic death involving an adolescent boy. I checked out the reference list at the back off the book to see where the story had originated and the source was listed as an Associated Press story from Knoxville (Maryland, USA). It didn’t take me too long to track down the press release on the internet. The report said:

“A 16-year old boy in Knoxville was found dead in his bedroom in what police describe as a gruesome, horrifying death. Firefighters were called to the scene Monday morning by a neighbor who smelled something burning. When the firemen found the remains of the teenager they called the police in to investigate. At first investigators believed that they were dealing with a ritualistic murder. Posters of heavy metal rock and roll groups covered his bedroom walls, groups which are often connected with satanic worship and rituals. According to a firefighter who was on the scene, the boy was found nude, with the remains of a cow’s heart attached to his genitals. Wires had been attached to the heart and plugged into a wall socket. The boy died from electrocution, then the electricity literally cooked his remains. Investigating Officer Hardaway dismissed the ritual murder theory when detectives found several underground pornographic magazines under the boy’s mattress. One of the magazines, called ‘Ovid Now’, describes a sexual ‘toy’ that can be made from the fresh heart of a cow, a simple electrical circuit, and some batteries. This deviancy is apparently gaining limited popularity in the rural South. Practitioners get the dead heart to beat, and then use the beating organ for sexual perversions. ‘This is one of the most gruesome things I have ever seen. I can’t believe that there are people who actually enjoy this sort of thing’ Hardaway commented. The boy’s parents are currently on vacation in Florida, where they were contacted and informed about the tragedy. They were unavailable for comment”.

As I have already written a previous blog on electrophilia and published an article on the ten strangest autoerotic deaths (in the magazine Bizarre) I thought it would make the basis for a good blog. However, after a bit more investigation I discovered the story to be a fake. The Snopes.com website (also know as the Urban Legends Reference Pages) investigated the story and showed it to be completely false. The author of the article (Barbara Mikkelson) wrote:

“The [cow heart masturbation story] isn’t a bona fide Associated Press article. No such death has been recorded, let alone been reported on by the Associated Press. What we have here is a work of fiction, an inventive leg-pull. Pranksters are everywhere, both on-line and off-line. In this case, someone took his best shot at presenting a gruesomely salacious story as a news item by dressing it up to mimic the style he assumed wire service copy adhered to, resulting in a laughable Associated Press pastiche”.

The same article also reported another fictitious tale of masturbatory death by animal (in this case a lobster). Here, the story was that a women had masturbated using a live lobster and that the lobster had defecated into her vagina, implanting brine shrimp eggs that then hatched inside her. Additionally, there are a few fictional cases in literature, the most infamous being the use of an animal liver as a masturbatory aid in Philip Roth’s 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint. The novel is basically the monologue of (as Wikipedia describes) “a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor who confesses to his psychoanalyst in intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language”. In my previous blog on sitophilia (sexual arousal from food), I did note that processed animal tissue has been used as a masturbatory aid (the most notable being botulinonia that involves the sexual use of sausages).

However, there is one case report in the scientific literature that is definitely true. It was published in a 1990 issue of the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology by Dr. Barry Randall, Dr. Richard Vance, and Dr. Timothy McAlmont and was simply titled ‘Xenolingual eroticism’. The paper described the case of a 29-year old female that presented at an abortion clinic saying that she had missed her periods and that she had a possible pregnancy that required termination. She was given a D&C (dilatation and curettage) and a muscular “pale grey tissue mass” measuring seven centimetres in length and 3 centimetres in diameter was found inside her vaginal passage. The object removed from her vagina turned out to be a deer tongue that the woman has been using as a masturbatory aid. At the time their case study was published, Dr. Randall and colleagues reviewed all the relevant literature on masturbatory practices in the Index Medicus database and found 42 papers (of which 27 detailed autoerotic deaths and 14 describing the psychology of autoeroticism). They then noted that:

“Only one reference reviewed various nonlethal autoerotic practices. Over a 42-year period, Aliabadi et al. recorded 18 patients, only three of whom were women, who presented with foreign body insertion for erotic purposes. All three women had inserted foreign bodies into the urinary tract. Acts of autoeroticism involving vaginal masturbation with foreign objects are perhaps more common. None to our knowledge have been reported because these do not result in death or injury, and typically would not come to medical attention. The literature discloses examples of foreign bodies extracted from the male and female lower urinary tract because objects of small diameter may be retracted by natural muscular impulses into the proximal urethra and/or bladder. Indeed, according to Kinsey and others >90% of foreign bodies found in the female bladder or urethra are there as a result of masturbation. Also, large objects retrieved from the vagina are found mostly in married women aged 17-30 [years]. However, these objects, most commonly bananas, cucumbers, and other large vegetables, rarely come to surgical attention. The medical literature reveals only seven references to bestiality. None of them deals with the issue of using nonviable animal tissue for autoerotic purposes. This report is presented so that xenoerotic objects may be placed on the list of possible masturbatory tools that may come to the attention of medical personnel”.

As far as I am aware, the case study by Dr. Randall and colleagues is the only academic paper on the use of animal tissue as a masturbatory aid. I did actually cite this study in a previous blog in relation to Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s 2011 typology of zoophiles in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine. The case cited by Randall and colleagues could be classed as a fetishistic zoophile. According to Dr. Aggrawal, these individuals keep various animal parts (especially fur) that they then use as an erotic stimulus as a crucial part of their sexual activity. Obviously the use of a deer tongue is rare but appears to fit the definition of a fetishistic zoophile.

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

Further reading

Aggrawal, A. (2011). A new classification of zoophilia. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 18, 73-78.

Aliabadi, H., Cass, A.S., Gleich, P., & Johnson, C.F. (1985). Self-Inflicted foreign bodies involving lower urinary tract and male genitals. Urology, 26, 12-16.

Brown, S. (1995). The Fortean Times Book of Weird Sex. London: John Brown Publishing.

Griffiths, M.D. (1999). Dying for it: Autoerotic deaths. Bizarre, 24, 62-65.

Mikkelson, B. (2006). Cowboy heart. Snopes.com, May 13. Located at: http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/cowheart.asp

Randall, M. B., Vance, R. P., & McCalmont, T. H. (1990). Xenolingual autoeroticism. The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 11, 89-92.

Snopes (2000). Lobster love. Snopes.com, January 26. Located at: http://www.snopes.com/risque/juvenile/lobster.asp

Snopes (2006). Deerly beloved. Snopes.com, February 26. Located at: http://www.snopes.com/risque/animals/deertongue.asp