Category Archives: Paraphilia
No laughing matter: A brief look at scary clowns and coulrophobia
A few days ago, the Nottingham Trent University Press Office asked if I would be interested in speaking to BBC Online News about coulrophobia (i.e., a fear of clowns). Obviously this is not my specialist area and the only article I’ve ever written about clown psychology was a previous blog on coulrophilia (i.e., sexual arousal from clowns) and an article on the psychology of fancy dress. It turned out that the BBC were writing a story about the British police being inundated with clowns scaring people by jumping out and chasing them. More specifically, the story claimed:
“Police across England have been called to dozens of incidents in which pranksters dress as ‘creepy clowns’ to deliberately scare people. The culprits are said to be following a trend that started in the US [and has spread to other countries, including Canada, Australia and France]. A 30-year-old man was arrested in Norwich after someone dressed as a clown jumped out from behind a tree and “terrified” a woman in a public park. On Sunday Thames Valley Police said it had been called to 14 incidents in 24 hours. In County Durham on Friday, four children were followed to school by a man in a clown outfit who was armed with what turned out to be a plastic machete. In a separate clowning caper in County Durham on Friday, police in Peterlee posted a photo on their Facebook page of items including two masks confiscated from two 12-year-olds who officers said had gone to a primary school to scare children. Meanwhile, in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, a man dressed as a clown and carrying a baseball bat was reported to have chased a 10-year-old child through a park. Gloucestershire Police said it had received six reports of ‘clowns’ behaving suspiciously or carrying knives. In one instance a child was followed. A cyclist in Eastbourne, Sussex, was left ‘shaken’ after someone dressed as a clown jumped out from a bush brandishing what he believed was an offensive weapon. And in Sudbury, Suffolk, a boy was chased by “several people dressed as clowns”.
As there was little academic research in coulrophobia, I felt I was as qualified as anyone to speculate on the roots of coulrophobia. I told the BBC that clowns tend to be scary because of their exaggerated looks and evil representation in films. Obviously, the vast majority of individuals are not scared of clowns in a day-to-day context but a clown’s face has become part of a scare culture. I noted that there is a stereotype of the nasty, evil, eerie clown. If you look at clowns facially what you tend to find is part of their face or feet are exaggerated, they have huge noses, scary mouths, huge elongated shoes, and wildfire hair. I also made reference to the cinematic trope of the evil clown. If you look at everything from Heath Ledger as The Joker in Batman to the clown in Stephen King‘s It. These clowns or characters with clown faces are either killers or they are doing really nasty things. Even if you have not come into contact with clowns, you’re likely to be influenced by what you see in television and films. According to the Wikipedia entry on coulrophobia:
“Clown costumes tend to exaggerate the facial features and some body parts, such as hands and feet and noses. This can be read as monstrous or deformed as easily as it can be read as comical. The significant aberrations in a clown’s face may alter a person’s appearance so much that it enters the so-called ‘uncanny valley’ in which a figure is lifelike enough to be disturbing, but not realistic enough to be pleasant—and thus frightens a child so much that they carry this phobia throughout their adult life. According to psychology professor Joseph Durwin at California State University, Northridge, young children are ‘very reactive to a familiar body type with an unfamiliar face. Researchers who have studied the phobia believe there is some correlation to the uncanny valley effect. Additionally, the fact that much clown behavior is ‘transgressive’ (anti-social behavior) can create feelings of unease”.
A couple of weeks ago after the spate of US clown attacks, Professor Frank McAndrew wrote an article for The Conversation on the psychology of what creeps us out about clowns. He compared his own thinking to that of the Canadian psychologist Dr. Rami Nader. More specifically, Professor McAndrew noted:
“[Dr. Nader] believes that clown phobias are fueled by the fact that clowns wear makeup and disguises that hide their true identities and feelings. This is perfectly consistent with my hypothesis that it is the inherent ambiguity surrounding clowns that make them creepy. They seem to be happy, but are they really? And they’re mischievous, which puts people constantly on guard. People interacting with a clown during one of his routines never know if they are about to get a pie in the face or be the victim of some other humiliating prank. The highly unusual physical characteristics of the clown (the wig, the big red nose, the makeup, the odd clothing) only magnify the uncertainty of what the clown might do next”.
No-one knows why the spate of clown attacks have occurred in the UK (or elsewhere). My own take on it is that the flurry of media stories about the phenomenon has probably contributed to some copycat cases (which then led one news story to the headline based on my radio interview with Talk Radio: “Killer clown attacks: Leading professor says sensationalist media has fuelled ‘Clownpocalypse’”) although there are likely to be other reasons (given that Halloween is coming up). As a psychologist I am far more interested in why someone would attack others dressed as a clown in the first place.
Here, I see a lot of similarities with online behaviour in that dressing up as a character is like the taking on of another persona when people are online carrying out anti-social acts such as trolling. While the psychological core and personality of an individual online or dressed up in an outfit with a mask (or thick hideous make-up) is still that same person, the anonymity provided by the nature of online interactions and the anonymity provided by wearing a different face or mask both lead to the person becoming more disinhibited and doing things that they would never do in a normal face-to-face situation. In essence, such people are taking on other identities – at least momentarily – and carrying out anti-social acts that they would normally not do. However, there will also be those who carry out such attacks because they get crazed and/or sadistic pleasure from doing so. Their motives may be as simple as boredom, revenge and/ or just wanting to ‘have a laugh’ – the main motives that have been found in my own research among people who troll online.
The current spate of clown attacks may well die down as quickly as they have come about and I’m sure as the media reporting decreases there will be less of such attacks (at least I am hoping so).
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
BBC News (2016). ‘Creepy clown’ police warnings as craze spreads. October 10, Located at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37605841
Dolan, L. (2016). Killer clown attacks: Leading professor says sensationalist media has fuelled ‘Clownpocalypse’. Talk Radio, October 11. Located at: http://talkradio.co.uk/news/killer-clown-attacks-leading-professor-says-sensationalist-media-has-fuelled-clownpocalypse#eO77SQMbGBWXECHO.99
Griffiths, M.D. (2014). Adolescent trolling in online environments: A brief overview. Education and Health, 32, 85-87.
Hayden, D. (2016). ‘Creepy clowns’ craze: Professionals hit out at pranksters. BBC News, October 11. Located at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37611993
McAndrew, F.T. (2016). The psychology behind why clowns creep us out. The Conversation, September 29. Located at: https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-behind-why-clowns-creep-us-out-65936
Thacker, S. & Griffiths, M.D. (2012). An exploratory study of trolling in online video gaming. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning, 2(4), 17-33.
Wikipedia (2016). Coulrophobia. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulrophobia
Wikipedia (2016). Uncanny valley. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
Zidbits (2011). Why are some people afraid of clowns? October 20. Located at: http://zidbits.com/2011/10/why-are-some-people-afraid-of-clowns/
Dying for it: Bizarre autoerotic deaths (Part 2)
In my previous blog I examined some of the most bizarre autoerotic deaths reported in the medical forensic literature. Here are another five.
Case 1: Autoerotic death by aerosol propellant
Source: Medicine, Science and the Law. Personal details: 32-year old white US man. Single. Computer programmer.
- Bizarre death event: Found dead in bed with cassette recorder next to him. He was wearing headphones which playing “snorting” horse sounds. There was also a can of aerosol propellant. At the end of the bed was a large painting of a male strapped to the hind legs of a horse who was being anally penetrating by the horse. The horse was ridden by a leather-clad woman. He was also wearing some kind if homemade masturbatory device. His death was recorded as cardio-respiratory failure consistent with aerosol propellant abuse (death by misadventure). Self-administration of the chemical agent to modify the sensations of masturbation. He was covered in dry semen stains.
Case 2: Autoerotic death by clothing
Source: Medicine, Science and the Law. Personal details: 25-year old Japanese male. Single.
- Bizarre death event: Man found dead in his bed one morning. naked except for clothing wrapping his head and underpants which were pulled down. He was covered in dry semen stains. He had put a black skirt on his face and then pulled a second skirt upside down over his head and turned down the bottom of it. He then put a plastic bag over these two garments followed by a pair of tights. The legs of the tights were used to tie a knot around the bottom of the skirts. He then wrapped a third skirt around all of this. Death was due to suffocation.
Case 3: Autoerotic death by hanging (female)
Source: Handbook of Forensic Pathology. Personal details: 19-year old white female. Single. College student.
- Bizarre death event: Woman was found dead in her bedroom hanging from the hinge of her closet door dressed as an Oriental “harem girl”. A window sash cord was tied around her body in a complicated fashion and she was also wearing a blindfold and mouth gag (made from the belt of her dressing gown). Next to her lay an underground magazine (this was folded out and showed a bizarre dance involving a clock – the minute hand being a nude male who would make love with the other figure on the hour), a paperback Hitchcock book which explained her fantasy. The paperback contained the story about an Oriental harem master. In this story the harem master provides girls to his lord who stored them by hanging them around his walls on hooks
Case 4: Autoerotic death by vacuum cleaner
Source: American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. Personal details: 57-year old white US male. Single. History of heart disease and chronic pancreatitis
- Bizarre death event: Man was found naked slumped over his vacuum cleaner after a neighbour wondered why the vacuum cleaner had been on continuously for a long time. The man was found leaning against the dining table with his testicles, buttocks and thighs tightly bound with women’s tights. Near the table was a jar of urine, jars of lubricant and a wooden table leg covered in fecal excrement. The man was covered in burns from the vacuum cleaner. No defect was found in the vacuum cleaner. The man basically had a heart attack while engaged in autoerotic activity. The wooden table leg had been used in an attempt to stimulate orgasm via anal penetration. His wife had caught him masturbating with the vacuum cleaner before (they hadn’t had sex for five years). The death was classed as natural rather than accidental.
Case 5: Autoerotic death by hydraulic tractor shovel
Source: Journal of Forensic Sciences. Personal details: 62 year-old US white male. Married. Farmer.
- Bizarre death event: Found dead in a barn lying on his front pinned under the hydraulic shovel of his tractor. His body was covered with semen stains and there was evidence of masochistic sexual bondage. His clothes were folded neatly away nearby. He was found naked except for a pair of women’s red shoes (with 8 inch heels), knee high stockings and tape duct wrapped around his ankles. Ropes led from his feet to the tractor which when raised would lift his inverted body causing complete suspension. It is not known exactly what happened but it is likely that the engine stalled and he was crushed underneath the tractor shovel. He died of positional asphyxiation by chest compression. This was an atypical autoerotic fatality because he did not purposely use asphyxiation but it did cause his death.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, 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: CRC Press.
Byard, R. W. (1994). Autoerotic death—characteristic features and diagnostic difficulties. Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, 1(2), 71-78
Cordner, S.M. (1983). An unusual case of sudden death associated with masturbation. Medicine, Science and the Law, 23(1), 54-56
Dietz, P. E., & O’Halloran, R.L. (1993). Autoerotic fatalities with power hydraulics. Journal of Forensic Science, 38(2), 359-364.
Ikeda, N., Harada, A., Umetsu, K., & Suzuki, T. (1988). A case of fatal suffocation during an unusual auto-erotic practice. Medicine, Science and the Law, 28(2), 131-134.
Imami, R. H., & Kemal, M. (1988). Vacuum cleaner use in autoerotic death. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 9(3), 246-248.
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Sauvageau, A., & Racette, S. (2006). Autoerotic deaths in the literature from 1954 to 2004: A review. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 51(1), 140-146.
Dying for it: Bizarre autoerotic deaths (Part 1)
In previous blogs I have examined many different sexual paraphilias that have ended up in death for individuals engaged in such practices. Many of these are from autoerotic asphyxiation but also from other sexual practices such as electrophilia and anaesthesiophilia. Today’s blog takes a brief look at some of the most bizarre autoerotic deaths reported in the medical forensic literature.
Case 1: Autoerotic death by car
Source: Journal of Forensic Sciences. Personal details: 40-year old white US male airline pilot. Married and father of two children.
- Bizarre death event: A man left his home at 6am in the morning and told his wife that he was going shooting in the country. He was found naked except for a large-link 10-foot chain harness secured around his body. (The harness was tied around the man’s neck in a moderately tight loop and bolted. The chain then went down his chest and was tied into another loop around his waist. This was tied to the bumper of the car) at 7.30am in the morning in a remote area crushed against the left fender of his car (equivalent of a VW beetle). The engine was still running, ignition was on and the driver’s door was still open. The steering wheel was tied so that it would go round in anti-clockwise circles. His clothes were in the boot of the car. Reconstruction of the events leading to his death showed that he was either being dragged round by the car or following the car producing feelings of asphyxia. When he had finished his sexual turn-on he had tried to approach the car door but had forgotten to undo the chain from the bumper. The chain had got tangled up in the car’s axle and the man was found strangled to death by the chain.
Case 2: Autoerotic death by hanging (male)
Source: American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. Personal details: 57-year old white US male. Single.
- Bizarre death event: Early one winter’s morning, two joggers found a partially clothed man hanging from a tree five inches from the ground. He was hanging from a rope tied round his neck but also had two other loops of rope harness around his thighs which also encircled his chest. His neatly folded clothes lay two feet away along with lipstick and a jar of Vaseline. He was wearing a woman’s brown wig and a stuffed white bra. He also wore a pair of men’s red underpants, a pair of tights and a pair of high-heeled women’s shoes. He was also found to have a carrot protruding from his anus. Basically his seat harness slipped and he asphyxiated himself on the ropes.
Case 3: Autoerotic death by blankets
Source: American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. Personal details: 60-year old white US male. Single. Diagnosed schizophrenic and had various sexual compulsions. Well educated former teacher.
- Bizarre death event: After being reported missing from work by his employer, a man was found dead rolled up in 14 different blankets which had been sewn together (the two outermost layers were found fixed with adhesive tape in various places which raised the possibility of murder). Inside the blankets he was dressed in two pairs of hotpants, a pair of long johns and a vest. The body was wet and his hands and arms were outstretched above his head. They found a plastic bag over his penis into which he had ejaculated. He was masturbating while inside the blankets but he had become too hypoxic and died. He was immobilized inside the blankets and was unable to free himself. Over the last few years he had bought an astonishing number of blankets by mail order (over 60 found in his apartment most of which seemed to have some ritual or obsessive meaning by the way were laid out. No pornography was found in the place.
Case 4: Autoerotic death by dental anaesthetic
Source: American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. Personal details: 59-year old white US male. Single. Antiques dealer
- Bizarre death event: Found dead in his locked apartment. He was seated in front of a dental anaesthetic machine with the anaesthetic face-mask over his face. He was sucking on a rubber teat similar (but much bigger) than a baby’s feeding bottle. There were other anaesthetic machines around the apartment as well as a lot of sexual literature (magazines, photographs, paintings, manuscripts all concerned with his elaborate fetish some of which included photographs of himself in these situations). He was wearing a rubber type apron, three woollen cardigans, a woman’s blouse and two pairs of women’s trousers and a pair of women’s bloomers.
Case 5: Autoerotic death by electrocution
Source: Medicine, Science and the Law. Personal details: 36-year old UK male. Gay (with partner). Unemployed ex-television engineer
- Bizarre death event: Man found dead with a wire cradle applied to his scrotum with another loop of wire (end folded over) inserted into his Vaseline-lubricated anus. The wires were connected to the two terminals that supplied the loudspeaker within the television. When switched on, these wires carried a current of 0.6 amps at 2.2 volts (a quarter of the current needed to light a small torch). The body had two significant injuries. One on the right side of his face (entrance mark of the current), and the other over the left side of his scrotum (where the loop of the wire had been). Unfortunately, one of the wires had broken off resulting in a cessation of the stimulating activity. The man looked inside the back of the open TV set and his face came into contact with an exposed metal cap which zapped 2500 volts through him. The metal cap was the only live part of the television set and it was this that killed him.
(Part 2 can be found here).
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, 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: CRC Press.
Eriksson, A., Gezelius, C., & Bring, G. (1987). Rolled up to death: An unusual autoerotic fatality. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 8(3), 263-265.
Hazelwood, R. R., Burgess, A. W., & Groth, A. N. (1981). Death during dangerous autoerotic practice. Social Science & Medicine. Part E: Medical Psychology, 15(2), 129-133.
Hiss, J., Rosenberg, S. B., & Adelson, L. (1985). ” Swinging in the park”: An investigation of an autoerotic death. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 6(3), 250-255.
Klintschar, M., Grabuschnigg, P., & Beham, A. (1998). Death from electrocution during autoerotic practice: case report and review of the literature. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 19(2), 190-193.
Leadbeatter, S. (1988). Dental anesthetic death: An unusual autoerotic episode. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 9(1), 60-63.
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Minyard, F. (1985). Wrapped to death. Unusual autoerotic death. The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 6(2), 151-152
Rupp, J. C. (1973). The love bug. Journal of Forensic Science, 18(3), 259-262.
Sauvageau, A., & Racette, S. (2006). Autoerotic deaths in the literature from 1954 to 2004: A review. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 51(1), 140-146.
Confession session: The psychology of apology
(Please note: The following blog is an extended version of an article that was first published earlier this year in the Nottingham Post).
Back in March 2016, Nottingham Labour Councillor Alan Rhodes made a public apology after the former social worker Andris Logins was jailed for 20 years for rape and abuse of children at a Nottinghamshire care home. Mr Rhodes said: “It was our role to keep children safe and we clearly didn’t” and that “we failed in our duty of care”. Although most of us apologise for all sorts of things each day, it’s becoming increasingly common for a ‘non-celebrities’ to say sorry in a public way – particularly for historical events that the person giving the apology had no part in.
There are three main ways of saying sorry. The first is the apology with no excuse, when we don’t try to justify what we’ve done. We simply take full responsibility and promise it will never happen again. Secondly, there’s the excuse apology when we say we’re sorry but also add it wasn’t our fault. For instance, we might blame someone else, an accident, human error, or a lapse of judgement. With the third type of apology, we don’t feel we’ve done wrong, but offer some sort of justification. If we’ve wronged someone, we might say they deserved it. We might even feel what we’ve done is so trivial it’s not even worth bothering about. Dr. Aaron Lazare, author of the 2005 book On Apology, says that an apology is one of the most profound interactions that two human beings can have between one another
But why do we apologise? Psychologist Dr. Guy Winch views apologies as linguistic tools that help us acknowledge violations of social expectations and norms. He also says that apologies help us take direct responsibility for the impact of our actions on other individuals and provide a way of asking for forgiveness. Consequently, we are able to repair our relationships with those individuals, restore our own social standing, and help ease guilt and/or shame. Confessing and saying sorry is a simple way to get rid of all those negative feelings. The guilt created by transgressions, such as lying on a CV, or cheating in an exam, can eat away at some people for years.
There also appear to be gender differences. Research studies have tended to find that women appear to say sorry far more than men, because men feel they’re ‘one down’ to someone if they offer an apology. In contrast, women will say sorry for things they haven’t done because they prefer to smooth things over quickly and keep relationships going. However, the differences may be more nuanced. One study found no differences between men and women in the number of the proportion of offenses that prompted apologies but men apologized less frequently than women because they had a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behaviour. Another study found that men apologized more frequently to women than they did to other men.
We also appear to have developed a ‘confessional culture’ over recent years in which celebrities and politicians are keener than ever to publicly admit to their private indiscretions. It could be that we’re more forgiving of public figures and that because we know more about the pressures of fame, we empathise with them. Another reason might be we no longer care because we don’t think what someone does in the private life affects their job. One thing we do expect from public figures is for their apologies to be sincere.
Arguably one of the most high profile examples was former US president Bill Clinton and his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Although Clinton continually denied for seven months any such relationship, when he eventually said sorry in August 1998, it was seen as sincere and many people sympathised with him. By apologising sincerely, or appearing to, public figures demonstrate they’re human, with weaknesses just like the rest of us.
These days, celebrities are quick to admit to what they’ve done. Lots of actors, comedians, singers and sports people have confessed to their addictions to drugs, alcohol and gambling before checking into high profile clinics like The Priory. For some, it’s no doubt a cynical move to help their public image. By apologising promptly, they’re seen as being brave, and any bad publicity will die down more quickly. Those who offer belated, grudging apologies see their image suffer.
Apologies can also help those who receive them. Police forces up and down the country have piloted schemes where criminals are confronted by their victims and offered a chance to apologies (known as ‘restorative justice’). Many victims say the one thing they’d really appreciate is an apology, and they’re often grateful to receive on. As the saying goes, “sorry seems to be the hardest word” but it has the potential to mean so much to so many.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Bachman, G. F., & Guerrero, L. K. (2006). Forgiveness, apology, and communicative responses to hurtful events. Communication Reports, 19(1), 45-56.
Griffiths, M.D. (2000). Saying sorry can make you feel so much better. The Sunday Post, January 23, p. 30-31.
Griffiths, M.D. (2016). Sorry may be the hardest word but more people than ever are saying it. Nottingham Post, April 11, p.14.
Fehr, R., & Gelfand, M.J. (2010). When apologies work: How matching apology components to victims’ self-construals facilitates forgiveness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 113(1), 37-50.
Frantz, C.M., & Bennigson, C. (2005). Better late than early: The influence of timing on apology effectiveness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(2), 201-207.
Lazare, A. (2005). On Apology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scher, S. J., & Darley, J. M. (1997). How effective are the things people say to apologize? Effects of the realization of the apology speech act. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26(1), 127-140.
Struthers, C. W., Eaton, J., Santelli, A. G., Uchiyama, M., & Shirvani, N. (2008). The effects of attributions of intent and apology on forgiveness: When saying sorry may not help the story. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(4), 983-992.
Takaku, S. (2001). The effects of apology and perspective taking on interpersonal forgiveness: A dissonance-attribution model of interpersonal forgiveness. Journal of Social Psychology, 141(4), 494-508.
Takaku, S., Weiner, B., & Ohbuchi, K.I. (2001). A cross-cultural examination of the effects of apology and perspective taking on forgiveness. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 20(1-2), 144-166.
Winch, G. (2013). Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts. London: Penguin.
Ova and out there: A brief look at ‘alien egg’ fetishes
When I originally started researching material for this blog, it was going to be about ‘insertion fantasy fetishes’ which refer to the sexual desires or fantasies of having something inserted into a person via any means in the pelvic region (vaginally, anally), with the insertion object typically being something out of the ordinary such as specifically shaped foods, abnormal objects, or even whole people (and which borders with sexual parahilias such as macrophilia and microphilia that I examined in previous blogs). However, when I typed in the words to Google, one article jumped out at me, an article in the online magazine Vice entitled ‘The emerging fetish of laying alien eggs inside yourself’ by Toby McCasker.
I am no stranger to the literature on alien fetishes and in a previous blog I reviewed the scant literature on exophilia (individuals who derive sexual pleasure and arousal from extraterrestrial, robotic, supernatural, or otherwise non-human life forms). The overwhelming majority of exophiles never claim to have had sex with an alien but claim that they are sexually excited and aroused by the thought of doing so. However, the topic of this blog does not fall under exophilia but does comprise an activity that could said to be part of an ‘insertion fetish’.
After reading the rest of this blog you may come to the conclusion that it is a thinly disguised advert for Primal Hardwere (PH) but I can assure you that it isn’t. It just happens that the focus of this article (sexual arousal from the insertion of ‘alien eggs’ into the vagina or anus) uses a product that is only available (as far as I am aware) from PH. McCasker’s article started like a number of my own:
“Recently, while on the internet looking at weird sex things, I came upon the gushing testimony of a young woman who had just discovered Primal Hardwere’s patented Ovipositor; one of the most unusual and confronting sex toys I’ve ever heard of. The Ovipositor is basically a big dildo that lays goopy eggs molded from gelatin in the body cavity of your choice. Fans of the Ovipositor say that the sensation of mushy extraterrestrial ovum slopping back out of them is a real treat. The owner of Primal Hardwere is a man who insisted I refer to him only as LoneWolf. A Native American of indeterminate age, he apparently worked as a builder, fast food dude, fashion model, church organist, butcher, and pursued veterinary medicine at the University of New Hampshire”.
For those who are unaware, an ovipositor is an organ used by some animals for the laying of eggs and the most infamous ovipositor I can think of is the one belonging to the alien queen xenomorph in the film Alien: Resurrection. (In fact, the original title of this article was going to be ‘Ripley’s believe it or not’ given that the heroine of all the Alien films is Ellen Ripley, but I decided that too few people would appreciate the pun). McCasker asked the developer of the Ovipostor dildo to explain the product and the thinking behind it:
“The idea is to replicate the act of being impregnated with eggs. Usually from an alien or insect. If you’ve seen the Aliens movies, you’ll get the picture. Many people find this sort of thing very arousing. The toys are simply phallic-shaped hollow tubes that can be used to insert gelatin eggs into oneself. There is a funnel-shaped hole in the bottom to receive the eggs, which are inserted one by one, forcing them up the tube and out the top…Let’s face it, there are three things that will always sell: Food, death, and sex. I tried food service and decided after managing three restaurants and owning one that it was the same thing, day in and day out, and it didn’t look like that was going to change much. Death didn’t really interest me. I wanted something more fun. Something that breaks the monotony of people’s days and makes them spit out their coffee when you tell them what you do…I wanted to push the boundaries of people’s comfort levels, make them question their own erections and wet panties, and let them know their fantasies do not have to go unrealized”.
Obviously PH didn’t start making the ovipositor dildos on a whim but it all began after ‘LoneWolf’ had created some one-off customized commissions prior to setting up PH. Unsurprisingly, no other company was (and is) making such products and ‘LoneWolf’ saw a gap in the market (or created a new market depending upon your perspective). As he told McCasker:
“Ovipositors were requested several times, and when I posted YouTube videos demonstrating them, the response was impressive. Tons of people wanted them – and while this is not a fetish of my own, I saw potential for a unique product line…[In terms of who buys the ovipositor dildos] the real answer here is simply ‘people’. I truly can’t say that it’s strictly one group or mindset or any other kind of convenient stereotype that like these sorts of things. People get turned on by many things beyond what our respective societies would deem ‘normal’ We are niche in the sense that we’re catering to some of the lesser catered-to fetishes. We send our products all over the world to many different races, creeds, and cultures…[In terms of appeal] there are different perspectives of everything, and Ovipositors are no exception. Many like to envision an alien creature that wants its eggs inside you. It can be a little intimidating or off-putting to those who do not fantasize about being the willing or unwilling host of alien beings inside them. It blurs the line of our own humanity to find sexual pleasure with something that is so far from human, and for some, just talking about it gets them wet”.
McCasker also wanted to know if there is any danger of inserting gelatin eggs into the vagina and anus and replied:
“Everything in moderation. We are not doctors, and we’re not about to comment on what is safe or unsafe to do to one’s body as it varies from person to person. I can say that I have used them many times without hurting myself, but frankly it is up to the person using it to know their own limits. For instance, if you are allergic to gelatin. If made properly, the eggs are firm, but rubbery, similar to the consistency of gummy bears. They dissolve with body heat rather quickly”.
I’m sure that such an explanation would not encourage many individuals to try out such a sex toy (and you may want to read my previous blog on rectal foreign bodies before making any such decision). Following the publication of McCasker’s article, dozens of other online news outlets picked up on the story (such as that in Uproxx, Nuvo, Philly Mag and Bust) and in some cases made the national UK tabloid news (such as a story in the Daily Star). What is not made clear is that individuals wanting to use the Ovipostor have to make the gelatin eggs themselves (but at least there’s a YouTube video to show you how). There are also a number of different types of Ovipostor including the Splorch and the Krubera. (I ought to just mention that although PH appears to be the only company that makes egg-producing dildos, other alien-inspired dildos are on the market (and overviewed in an article by Ben Hayward on the Unilad website).
It’s hard to know whether using such niche sex toys is a genuine fetish but PH are making money from selling such products so it would appear that some people out there are at least experimenting with alien imagery and alien-like artefacts as part of their sex lives.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Baumgartner, S. (2015). This fun sex toy lets you lay eggs. Wait what? Located at: http://bust.com/sex/14643-why-does-this-dildo-have-everyone-buzzing.html
Black Panther (2015). Alien impregnation (has any opinions changed?)[sic]. Preggophilia, March 21. Located at: http://preggophilia.com/alien-impregnation-has-any-opinions-changed-t
Butler, B. (2015). Newest sexual fetish: Getting alien eggs laid inside you. Philly Mag, August 17. Located at: http://www.phillymag.com/g-philly/2015/08/17/newest-sexual-fetish-getting-alien-eggs-laid-inside-you/
Daily Star (2015). Weirdest sex toy ever? Fake alien penis designed to lay eggs in people, December 9. Located at: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/480485/alien-dildo-ovipositor-Primal-Hardwere-Lone-Wolf
Hayward, B. (2015). These alien fetish dildos will blow your mind. Unilad, December 30. Located at: http://www.unilad.co.uk/nsfw/these-alien-fetish-dildos-will-blow-your-mind/
McCasker, T. (2015). The emerging fetish of laying alien eggs inside yourself. Vice, August 13. Located: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-emerging-fetish-of-laying-alien-eggs-inside-yourself
Murrell, S. (2015). So, this is a thing: Alien egg impregnation dildos. Nuvo, October 19. Located at: http://www.nuvo.net/AsktheSexDoc/archives/2015/10/19/so-this-is-a-thing-alien-egg-impregnation-dildos
Ritzen, S. (2015). Feast your eyes on this new alien egg-laying dildo fetish. Uproxx, August 13. Located at: http://uproxx.com/webculture/alien-egg-laying-dildo-fetish/
Watson, Z. (2016). Jeff Goldblum, splorching, and the alien intercourse fetish. Inverse, June 30. Located at: https://www.inverse.com/article/17671-jeff-goldblum-sexy-alien-invasion-fetish-splorch
Tickled: The strange (but true) story of competitive endurance tickling, catfishing, and trolling
Last month, an article that I wrote on knismolagnia (in which individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal from tickling or being tickled) was featured in an online article in Vox about the documentary Tickled and the world of ‘competitive endurance tickling’ (CET). Given that endurance sports are by definition ‘extreme’ and that I have examined other extreme sports and endurance events in my previous blogs, I thought that CET would make an interesting topic to examine. Tickled was co-directed by the New Zealand journalist David Farrier and the videographer Dylan Reeve but turned out to be a far more interesting film than just about CET. It all started when Farrier came across an online advert placed by Jane O’Brien Media (JOBM):
“This is a shout out to TICKLISH MALE ATHLETIC FITNESS MODELS (aged 18-25) IN THE USA (all 50 states), CANADA, UK, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND JAPAN. What I’m shooting lately is unique. It’s been exploring several situations in which attractive, ticklish, and masculine guys are actually tickled in two different restrained formats, then involved in demonstrating some tickling skills themselves. Presently, I’ve been shooting all-male casts. It is important for you to understand from the get-go that this is not a fetish, or adult-oriented content endeavour. Also, no nudity or implied nudity work is a part of anything that I ever shoot. I repeat: recent shoots have featured all-male casts. This is a completely athletic activity with major competitive and endurance elements involved, including strategy and teamwork. I’m focused on Competitive Reality Endurance Tickling”.
It was when Farrier saw the phrase “Competitive Reality Endurance Tickling” that his journalistic instincts started to stir. The website advert said that successful applicants would be put up in a Los Angeles (US) hotel, have to wear Adidas branded clothes, and be paid US$1500 to participate. One of the CET participants Jordan Schillachi said in an online video: “This is a very competitive company…There’s probably 600 guys every 30 minutes sending pictures to want to get in”. By way of further background, the Wikipedia entry on Farrier noted that:
“In early 2014 Farrier began production of the feature-length documentary ‘Tickled’, which he co-directed with videographer Dylan Reeve. The project began when Farrier sought to do a ‘light entertainment’ piece about videos purported to depict ‘Competitive Endurance Tickling’. His inquiry to Jane O’Brien Media, the videos’ producer, was met with a hostile refusal to talk with him, prompting Farrier and Reeves to investigate further, and the film relates their efforts to find out more about the people involved in making the videos, and the person or persons behind them”.
If you type the words ‘competitive endurance tickling’ into Google, all the links that come up in the first two pages all concern the film Tickled and the various news reports and/or film reviews about it. The JOBM videos featuring CET all feature “young athletic men” who restrain and tickle each other and “compete to see who can stand to be tickled the longest”. Farrier simply wanted to find out more about the so-called ‘sport’ and contacted JOBM about the ‘sport’ and the videos it produced. Farrier received a “hostile” and homophobic response from JOBM that focused on Farrier’s bisexuality and asserting that CET is a “passionately and exclusively heterosexual athletic endurance activity”. The hostility Farrier received and the legal threats he received from JOBM spurred Farrier into making the film. Arguably using bullying tactics, JOBM tried their best to stop the documentary being made. Farrier and Reeve subsequently located where JOBM operated from in Los Angeles, and turn up unannounced at their premises but are turned away at the door of the JOBM offices. The Wikipedia entry on the film noted:
“Their research uncovers information about a person known as Terri DiSisto (or ‘Terri Tickle’), a pioneer of recruiting and distributing tickling videos online, in the 1990s. They interview another tickling-video producer, whose operations are a low-key affair. They speak to a few former participants in O’Brien’s videos, who describe coercive and manipulative treatment by the producers, such as defamation campaigns against them, exposing their personal information and contacting school or work associates to discredit them, in retaliation for challenging or speaking out against the company. A local recruiter in Muskegon, Michigan describes ‘audition’ videos he’d helped make, being published without the participants’ consent. Farrier and Reeve chance upon documents which link O’Brien to David D’Amato, the former school administrator behind the ‘Terri Tickle’ alias, who served a six-month prison sentence for disabling computer systems at two different universities on multiple dates. They determine that D’Amato now lives on a substantial inheritance from his father, a successful lawyer. After considerable effort to locate him, they confront him on the street, to which he responds with additional legal threats. Before returning to New Zealand, Farrier contacts D’Amato’s step-mother for comment; she implicitly confirms his “tickling” past, and he informs her of D’Amato’s ongoing involvement in it”.
The film exposes a ‘tickling ring’ that appears to have been operation for a couple of decades. The Vox article reports that the film tells three simultaneous stories:
“The first and most basic [story] is about people who like tickling and being tickled. The second, deeper story is about catfishing – the kind of systematic, continual deception you sometimes encounter when manipulative individuals obscure their identities online. The catfisher at the center of ‘Tickled’ may be shrouded in mystery, at least until the film really gets going, but they aren’t the stereotypical lonely human on the internet. Whoever’s responsible orchestrates an elaborate plot involving lawyers, a battery of legal threats and actual lawsuits, a cadre of real minions who willingly helped carry out the ruse, and a host of nubile young men who get paid to be tickled. And that leads to [the film’s] third and most compelling story, which is a story about power. ‘Tickled’ is what happens when you put power, wealth, and privilege into the hands of an internet troll with a single-minded goal: to crush his enemies and film people being tickled. ‘Tickled’ is a procedural; the process of how Farrier and Reeve uncover their story takes up most of the documentary’s narrative…‘Tickled’ occasionally gets into the nitty-gritty details of confirming the catfisher’s ultimate identity – by investigating website domains, stock photos, and more – in a way that might bore some viewers. But the clues Farrier and Reeve unearth along the way are generally so weird and unique that many people will find it riveting”.
The Vox article went on to question whether CET is just a creative name for a sexual fetish (which is where my previous article on knismolagnia made an appearance). Farrier’s view was that the videos might perhaps be about JOBM producing homoerotic fetish videos that they could make money from. (JOBM strenuously denied they sold the videos for such purposes. “This is not a fetish, or adult-oriented content endeavor”). The Vox article also said:
“Tickled explores the nature of tickling fetishes and the personalities of the people who wind up monetizing them: The documentary features one film producer who quit his day job after realizing he could make thousands of dollars a month by catering to people with this very specific fetish”.
When Farrier began writing about CET in 2014, online readers responded by saying that his writings reminded them of stories about an internet troll that had been operating with a similar modus operandi a couple of decades previously. Farrier cam to the conclusion that the troll and JOBM might in fact be one and the same. As Farrier observed:
“If you Googled ‘tickling videos’ and ‘internet,’ the story came up, so we made that connection very, very quickly. The circumstantial coincidence of how they [both] operated was very obvious, but going deeper than that was harder for us. To actually prove any of it – that’s the journey of this documentary. It’s good to go in cold and just let it unfold in front of you, and then, at the end of it, you should spend a little time thinking it all through again and decide how you feel. That’s what we did experiencing the whole thing, and I think that’s good for you as an audience as well”.
So if you want to know whether Farrier’s suspicions were confirmed, you’ll have to go and watch the film – but I’ll just end by noting that JOBM have now produced their own website (‘Tickled, The Truth’) to counter Farrier’s claims.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, 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: CRC Press.
Blackwell, S. (2016). Tickling. Prodomme. Located at: http://www.prodomme.com/fetishes/tickling
Farrier, D. (2014). Homophobia and competitive tickling. 3 News, May 7. Located at: https://web.archive.org/web/20140603201419/http://www.3news.co.nz/Homophobia-and-competitive-tickling/tabid/418/articleID/343206/Default.aspx
Him and Her Sex Blog (2012). Knismolagnia. February 12. Located at: http://himandhersexblog.tumblr.com/post/17661996177/knismolagnia
Right Diagnosis (2012). Knismolagnia. Located at: http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/k/knismolagnia/intro.htm
Romano, A. (2016). New documentary ‘Tickled’ takes you into a world of sexual fetishes, catfishing, and internet secrets unearthed. Vox, June 21. Located at: http://www.vox.com/2016/6/21/11963566/tickled-competitive-tickling-documentary-explained
Wikipedia (2012). Catfishing. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfishing
Wikipedia (2012). Tickled. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickled
Wikipedia (2012). Tickling game. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickling_game
Getting to the point: A brief look at injection fetishes
In a previous blog I examined ‘medical fetishism’. One of the sub-types of medical fetishism comprises individuals who derive sexual pleasure and arousal from being the recipients of a medical or clinical procedure (typically some kind of bodily examination). This includes genital and urological examinations (e.g., a gynaecological examination), genital procedures (e.g., fitting a catheter or menstrual cup), rectal procedures (e.g., inserting suppositories, taking a rectal temperature, prostate massage), the application of medical dressings and accessories (e.g., putting on a bandage or nappy, fitting a dental retainer, putting someone’s arm in plaster), and the application and fitting of medical devices (e.g., fitting a splint, orthopaedic cast or brace).
One type of medical fetish that I did not mention was that involving individuals that have ‘injection fetishes’. Obviously this fetish appears to be a very niche sexual behaviour within medical fetishism but there are various online forums and websites that cater for individuals who derive sexual pleasure from the giving or receiving of injections (or watching such acts). For instance, there is a dedicated forum within the Voy.com website where individuals share their injection stories, the Real Injection website (which features stories and clips from films and news stories where injections are administered), the Needing Needles page on Tumblr (which mainly consists of photographic pictures featuring hypodermic needles), The Injection Girls website (which doesn’t appear to be overtly sexual but would be highly arousing for those with an injection fetish), the Fetish Clinic website (featuring lots of medical fetish videos including injections), and even a dedicated Facebook page on the topic.
In researching this article I came across many online accounts (of various degrees of detail) of people claiming to have an injection fetish. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the statements but they appeared genuine to me:
- Extract 1: “I am an injection fetish person. [I] Iike to watch injection pictures [and] videos particularly a female being the administrator”.
- Extract 2: “At [the] age of 18 [years] I was hospitalized for a week. I had to [have an] injection every day [from a] nurse…On [the] first two days she told me to lower my pants [to give the] injection. [She] slowly injected the needle in my fatty butt. On [the] third day I told her to [take] down my jeans by herself. First she hesitated, but [did] it. [The] next day she came and [did it without me asking]. She lowered my jeans…[and] gave [me the] injection on [my] butt…She gave me injections and then made me horny by keeping her hand & finger on [where she had injected me. It felt] uncomfortable. but she still smiled. She obviously teased me and on the same day I [returned] home with an injection fetish”.
- Extract 3: “I ejaculate [and am] more happy if a nice woman dressed in nurse [gives] me an injection…I like very much the preparation protocol before injection…I have [had] this fetish since I received [my] first injection made by a nurse when I was 10 years old…This is a nice fetish. I know that is not very common but I know some people [who] like it, so we are not alone [in having] curious pleasures”.
- Extract 4: “I have an injection fetish…When I was younger I got a shot from a nurse and after injected she was getting very fresh and touchy with me. I could not turn her down when she said we must go somewhere and get it on…I have never felt so satisfied after she [injected] me. That’s where it started. She was forceful and demanding. The [injection] shot was large and scary. I wasn’t real thrilled about getting it but she said it [was in my] best interest. So I bent over. She swabbed me. I was a bit resistant. She was persuasive in her words…It was hurting. Then while she was injecting that was hurting too. I was squirming and moaning. But I would love for this to happen again someday”
- Extract 5: “I have an ‘injection fetish’. That means that I get only sexually attracted when thinking about women getting injections in their butt. I also like to have fantasies about myself getting injections in the butt by woman. This fetish is apparently rare, but also not that uncommon…As such, a fetish might not be something bad, but this one prevents me from having orgasm in normal sexual intercourse. The female vagina does not sexually really attract me…It basically destroys any relationship because I cannot have an orgasm or ejaculate during normal sexual intercourse…Has this specific type of medical fetish (or similar ones…suppositories, enemas, gyno) been researched in medical/psychological science? Once I know where this [fetish] is from, I can understand it and I can control it…To me, it appears I had this fetish from day one (of course, that was not the case, but [that is how] it feels)”.
Unlike the others quoted here, this last extract is from a person also provided further description about himself. He was 39 years of age when he posted his comments and claimed to have developed the fetish in childhood some time between the ages of six to eight years. He claims not to know where the fetish originated, and his only description of his childhood was that he had a father who used to beat him and who wouldn’t let him bring any friends to his house (including girlfriends). Although the accounts here are brief, all five are males, and three of the five extracts mention getting an injection from a nurse at some point on their lives had kick-started their injection fetish and would appear to suggest that associative pairing took place and that their sexual arousal from injections arises as a result of classical conditioning.
It’s also worth mentioning that there are also hard-core pornographic films where injections are central to the ‘plot’ – the 2011 film Lethal Injection being the most infamous example. (I say “infamous” because many newspapers – such as a piece in the Daily Mail – reported that China’s leading state-run news agency Xinhua posted the screen shots from the film on its website under the headline ‘Actual Record of Female Inmate’s Execution – Exposing the World’s Darkest Side’ and claimed it showed a real execution by lethal injection in the United States. In the film itself, a doctor has sex with a woman after she has been given a lethal injection and arguably is more about necrophilia and lust murders than it is about injection fetishes).
Academically, I’m not aware of any research specifically focusing on injection fetishes although a paper by Dr. Allen Bartholomew published back in 1973 in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry alluded to behaviours that have similarities to injection fetishes. Bartholomew was studying the characteristics of intravenous drug users and noted three cases of autohaemofetishism (i.e., deriving sexual pleasure from sight of blood drawn into a syringe during intravenous drug practice, something that I briefly mentioned in a previous blog on vampirism as a sexual paraphilia). He also noted three cases of ‘injection masochism’ in which users were sexually aroused from giving themselves injections. In both of these two features, it was argued by Bartholomew that both of the two features were considered to be brought about by classical conditioning.
More recently, in 2012 issue of the journal Rhizomes in Emerging Knowledge, Dr. Varpu Rantala examined the recurrence of drug injection scenes in contemporary mainstream cinema from a cultural studies perspective. She argued that in cinematic terms:
“Injection is a fetish – not only of drug users but a collective one. The injection shots momentarily fix the images of what is thinkable and sayable about intravenous drug use, centering it on an overindulgence in injection and reducing ‘addicted bodies”.
However, the word ‘fetish’ in this context is not being used in any sexual sense. She also makes reference to the portrayal of drug addicts in the work of US writer William Burroughs. Again, this is not used in a sexual sense but she does make some interesting observations about obsession and addiction:
“The coolness in Burroughs’s description of a junkie is paradoxically both ice-cold and mobilizing, or attractive, as understood in relation to the attraction image. These images may also be fetishized. Intravenous drug users may develop a fetish for injection, the ‘needle fixation’, an addiction to the injection itself that is often experienced as both repulsive and seductive (Pates et al 2001). But, it seems that “needle fixation” is not only about intravenous drug users: this kind of ambiguous fascination with the injection image as part of late modern mainstream everyday audiovisual culture may even be described a ‘cinematic obsession’: as the ‘hold [of drugs] on the modern imagination [is] seemingly as strong as the hold it has over those addicted to it’ (Boothroyd 2007, 9), ‘it is the ambiguity and duality of the symbolism [of the syringe] that is the source for conflict, and intense pleasurable obsession’ (Fitzgerald 2010, 205). The recurrence of these images in their over-indulgence of sensuous material of extreme explicitness reminds one of the processes of addiction as unwilled repetition of excessive sensual experience: a cinematic addiction…Repetitive, fixed and fetishized, late modern drug injection images are clichés that may ‘penetrate each one of us’ (Deleuze 2005, 212). This may also be about an intense encounter that moves us. In case of the injection shot, they form a place of intensity in a film; an attraction image (Gunning 1990) that reaches towards the viewer and that Williams (1991) has further discussed with respect to porn, horror and melodrama”
Finally, (and staying with films), a few years ago there was an interesting article on the Hannibal Studio Lo website (a site dedicated to critical analysis of all things Hannibal Lecter). Unfortunately, the website is no longer on the internet but one of the contributors to the site made the observation that the author of all the ‘Hannibal Lecter’ books (Thomas Harris) has (in his writing) a “fetish for injections, a love-hate relationship for the meaning of getting an injection and its purpose”. The article made references to the many passages in Harris’ books that concern injections but asserts that:
“The most impressive descriptions of injections in the [novel] of ‘Hannibal’ are those given by Dr. Lecter to Clarice Starling. Appearing in Chapter 94 there is a ‘Tiny sting of the finest needle – Starling did not even look down’ and in Chapter 91 there is ‘Day and evening again, the smell of fresh flowers in the house, and once the faint sting of a needle’. The essence of those injections, which would lead her from one life to another and help her cross the final threshold to her transformation. So what do you think is the significance of injections according to the Harris realm? Could it be that one of the ingredients of a dark and profound romance is the intimate enigmatic comfort of Hannibal’s injections? I think it is very interesting to note how Harris’s equation promises that from an ambiguous act that could be considered controlling, true freedom and tranquility are born”.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
(Note: the original weblink for the article concerning Thomas Harris’ “fetish for injections” was at: http://www.hannibalstudiolo.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1095&start=-1&sid=0f25ca4b4c2dca0bd9f85038ae600a03)
Further reading
Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Bartholomew, A. A. (1973). Two features occasionally associated with intravenous drug users: A note. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 7(3), 206-207.
Bizarre Magazine (2010). Medical fetishism. December 1. Located at: http://www.bizarremag.com/fetish/fetish/10393/medical_fetish.html?xc=1
Boothroyd, D. (2007). Cinematic heroin and narcotic modernity. In Ahrens, R. and Stierstorfer, K. (eds.), Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics (pp. 7-28). New York: AMS Press.
Deleuze, G. (2005a) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. London: Continuum.
Fitzgerald, J. (2010). Images of the desire for drugs. Health Sociology Review, 12(2), 205-217.
Pates, R.M., McBride, A.J., Ball, N. & Arnold, K (2001). Towards an holistic understanding of injecting drug use: An overview of needle fixation. Addiction Research and Theory, 9, 3-17.
Rantala, V. (2012). Hardcore: Schizoanalysis as audiovisual thinking of cinematic drug injection images. Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 24, 1-12
Wikipedia (2012). Medical fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_fetishism
Williams, L. (1991). Film bodies: Gender, genre and excess. Film Quarterly, 44(4), 2-13.
The beast inside: The psychology of animal torture
A few days ago, I was interviewed by the Irish newspaper The Journal about someone deliberately trying to poison a dog by throwing three rat poison-stuffed chorizo sausages into Linda O’Byrne’s garden. But what typically possesses anyone to inflict such acts of intentional animal torture and cruelty (IATC)? In this particular case it may have been done as an act of revenge or as a way to shock O’Byrne to the amusement of the person who did it.
In addition to these reasons, rhere are many types of IATC including individuals that do it (i) as a religious ritual sacrifice, (ii) as an ‘artistic’ sacrifice (e.g., killing animals in films such as the controversial Cannibal Holocaust), (iii) because they have psychological disorders (such as anti-social/psychopathic personality disorders and engage in deliberate acts of zoosadism), and/or (iv) because they have sexually paraphilic disorders (such as crush fetishism in which small animals are crushed for sexual pleasure). Additionally, there is some research showing that in some circumstances, IATC is sometimes used to coerce, control and intimidate women and/or children to be silent about domestic abuse within the home. Although any animal torture is shocking, arguably the most disturbing type of IATC is that which occurs amongst those with anti-social personality disorders.
When the science of behavioural profiling began to emerge in the 1970s, one of the most consistent findings reported by the FBI profiling unit was that childhood IATC appeared to be a common behaviour among serial murderers and rapists (i.e., those with psychopathic traits characterized by impulsivity, selfishness, and lack of remorse). Many notorious serial killers – such as Jeffrey Dahmer – began by torturing and killing animals in their childhood. Dahmer also collected animal roadkill, dissected the remains, and masturbated over the animals he had cut up. Other killers known to have engaged in childhood IATC include child murderer Mary Bell (who throttled pigeons), Jamie Bulger’s murderer Robert Thompson who (who was cruel to household pets), and Moors murderer Ian Brady (who abused animals).
IATC is one of the three adolescent behaviours in what is often referred to the ‘Homicidal Triad’ (the other two being persistent bedwetting and obsessive fire-setting). Some criminologists and psychologists believe that the combination of two or more of these three behaviours increases the risk of homicidal behaviour in adult life. However, scientific evidence for this has been mixed. There has also been research into some of the contributory factors as to why a minority of children engage in IATC. Research has shown that the behaviours in the ‘Homicidal Triad’ (including IATC) are often associated with parental abuse, parental brutality (and witnessing domestic violence), and/or parental neglect.
A number of criminological studies have shown that around a third to a half of all sexual murderers have abused animals during childhood and/or adolescence (although I ought to add that sample sizes in most of these published studies are usually relatively small). However, most research has reported that one of the most important ‘warning signs’ and risk factors (specifically relating to the propensity for sex offending), is animal cruelty if accompanied by a sexual interest in animals. Other researchers have speculated that the zoosadistic acts among male adolescents may be connected to problems of puberty and proving virility.
Another ‘triad’ of psychological factors that have been associated with IATC are three specific characteristics of personality – Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (the so-called ‘Dark Triad’). Studies carried out by Dr. Phillip Kavanagh and his colleagues have examined the relationship between the three Dark Triad personality traits and attitudes towards animal abuse and self-reported acts of animal cruelty. They found that the psychopathy trait is related to intentionally hurting or torturing animals, and was also a composite measure of all three Dark Triad traits.
In Germany, there have been an increasing number of violent crimes against horses. This offence of ‘horse ripping’ (i.e., violently cutting, slashing and/or stabbing of horses) has been accepted as a criminal phenomenon in Germany and has led to a number of studies on the topic. Horse ripping has been defined as a destructive act “with the aim to harm a horse or the acceptance of a possible injury of a horse, especially killing, maltreatment, mutilation and sexual abuse in sadomasochistic context”. In 2002, German researchers Dr, Claus Bartmann and Dr. Peter Wohlsein reported a study examining 193 traumatic horse injuries over a four-year period. They reported that at least ten of the injuries (including wounds from knives, spears, and guns) were acts of zoosadism.
There is no easy solution to childhood IATC. Given that most children learn anti-social behaviour from those around them, the best way to prevent it is teaching by example. Here, parents are the key. Pro-social behaviour by parents and other role models towards animals (such as rescuing spiders in the bath, feeding birds, treating pets as a member of the family) has the potential to make a positive lasting impression on children.
Note: A version of this article was first published in The Independent.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Arluke, A., Levin, J., Luke, C., & Ascione, F. (1999). The relationship of animal abuse to violence and other forms of antisocial behavior. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14(9), 963-975.
Bartmann, C.P. & Wohlsein, P. (2002). Injuries caused by outside violence with forensic importance in horses. Dtsch Tierarztl Wochenschr, 109, 112-115.
Beetz, Andrea (2002). Love, Violence, and Sexuality in Relationships between Humans and Animals. Germany: Shaker Verlag.
Beirne, P. (1999). For a nonspeciesist criminology: Animal abuse as an object of study. Criminology, 37(1), 117-148.
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