Category Archives: Pornography
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
Soil flush: A peek into the world of the Japanese burusera
“A posting on China’s leading auction site Taobao for the sale of Beijing Olympics cheerleaders’ uniforms, including their unwashed bras and panties, has whipped up a minor storm on China’s Internet. An agent claiming to represent one of the many international teams of Olympics cheerleaders put up the intimate innerwear items for auction and ‘guaranteed their authenticity’ and their ‘unwashed’ status. In language intended to appeal to panty fetishists, the agent wrote, ‘They are sure to excite you. When you hold them up to your nose and sniff, you’ll smell the youthful fragrance of the young girls’…the auction listing has been flamed by incensed Chinese netizens as a ‘vulgar, shameless insult to the Olympics spirit’…From all accounts, the ‘panty donors’ may have been cheerleaders from Japan, where there exists a thriving market for used innerwear that are used in auto-erotic practices. In fact, so-called ‘burusera’ shops in Japanese cities and towns cater to the kinky needs of hormonally driven men to this day” (Story in DNA India, 2008).
According to the Wikipedia entry, ‘burusera’ is a word of Japanese origin and is a hybrid of the word ‘buruma’ meaning ‘bloomers’ (i.e., the bottoms of a gym suit), and ‘sera-fuku’ meaning ‘sailor suit (i.e., the traditional school uniform for Japanese schoolgirls). In Japan, burusera shops sell second-hand clothes and undergarments as well as items (including sanitary towels and tampons) that are soiled with bodily fluids from the owner of the original items (e.g., urine, fecal matter, menstrual blood, etc.). Typically, the sold merchandise is accompanied with a photograph of the girl wearing or holding the item, and acts as a ‘certificate of authenticity’. The buyers of such items typically smell the items as a source of sexual stimulation and gratification. In Japan, there was even a film released (Burusera: Shop of Horrors, a 1996 film directed by Takeshi Miyasaka) about three high school girls from Tokyo that to make extra pocket-money sell their underwear to a burusera shop for pocket money (but don’t actually realise that they are facilitating the latest Japanses fetish craze). According to the Wikipedia entry:
“[Japanese] schoolgirls once openly participated in the sale of their used garments, either through burusera shops or using mobile phone sites to sell directly to clients. When laws banning the purchase of used underwear from minors were introduced in Tokyo in 2004, it was reported that some underage girls were instead allowing their clients (called kagaseya or sniffers) to sniff their underwear from directly between their legs. In August 1994, a burusera shop manager who made a schoolgirl sell her used underwear was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on suspicion of violation of article 34 of the Child Welfare Act and article 175 of the Criminal Code. The Police alleged violations of the Secondhand Articles Dealer Act which bans the purchase of secondhand goods without authorization. Child pornography laws imposed legal control over the burusera industry in 1999. However, burusera goods in themselves are not child pornography, and selling burusera goods are an easy way for schoolgirls to gain extra income. This has been viewed with suspicion as child sexual abuse.Prefectures in Japan began enforcing regulations in 2004 that restricted purchases and sales of used underwear, saliva, urine, and feces of people under 18. Existing burusera shops stock goods from women at least 18 years old”.
A short article by ‘Morana’ about burusera at the Heaven 666 website provides pictures of Japanese vending machines that were once used to sell pre-packed and ‘ready-to-sniff’ used panties. The same article also makes reference to ‘namasera’, a variation of burusera that means ‘fresh’. Apparently, the namasera concept is the same as burusera, but in this case “the goods are still being worn by the girl who then removes them and hands them over directly at the point of sale”. A more in-depth article by journalist Agnes Gaird reported that:
“[The burusera shop business] concerns a very small minority of Japanese but big enough to support about 30 burusera in Japan. Customers often return to provide themselves with ‘fresh’ products (that is to say, still warm). Under the names of ‘Ado’, ‘Love and ready’, or ‘Lemon club’ these specialised sex-shops sell many more things than undies. They sell the fragrance of eternal youth. For in Japan, pants are synonymous with youthfulness and innocence. In a corner of the shop, dozens of small packets carefully wrapped in plastic, hermetically closed, are lined up on a shelf. Each packet contains a pair of pants, worn before and unwashed, whose prices vary according to several criteria: fragrance, ‘cooking’ time, sedimentation and ideally should be as dirty as possible; the smellier, the better. Prices range between 800 and 8,000 yen. But the customer is not permitted to open the bags for quality control testing. He can choose only according to the picture decorating each packet by way of certificate: the photo of the girl taken in the shop the very day it was purchased by the shopkeeper. Her first name, her age, sometimes even her blood group, all these details come as an extra bonus increasing the added value of the fragrant pants, filled with her shadow presence”.
An interview with a self-identified ‘burusera girl’ (‘Marina A’) at the Pantydeal.com website, provided some personal insight into the burusera phenomenon.
“When I was little, many middle school and high school girls used to make frequent trips to burusera shops for quick cash. Freshly taken off underwear were sold [for higher prices] than dried up panties…I have been [selling burusera items] for about 6 months now…I have done some transactions in Japan, but now I do most business here in the US. I don’t think there is [a typical burusera client]…I have had sales from older guys or someone really young…I have had guys who are single, also guys who are married because they just like the taste of women and their ladies in their lives do not let them…[Menstrual] period items are popular, but I have an ability to hold blood inside my body. So I have requests for pure blood. I sold it in a test tube…The fun part of [burusera is] the notion of guys enjoying my scent discreetly”.
Another first-hand account of the burusera business was described by an anonymous Japanese woman who began selling her used panties at the age of 14 years. She worked in a burusera shop in the Shibuya area in Tokyo that sold “used girls’ undies, bras, socks, gym suits, as well as school uniforms”. She claimed:
“At the shop, the girls wearing the school uniform could sell almost everything they wear and ‘produce’. Some of them sell even used sanitary napkins, tampons, saliva, urine, s**t and others if there are ‘demands’…The burusera shop is the great place for the girls who want avoid spending time with their family. It allowed them to work from 10am to 10pm, 7 days a week and earn $100-1000 per an item. Usually girls could set the price of their items. If the item is sold, a half of the fixed price goes to the girl, and another half goes to the shop’s revenue. For instance, I set the price of my undies as $200…I sold my bra for $300, socks for $200, shoes for $400, shirts for $400, saliva for $350, and urine for $400. I never sold my s**t, but there were girls who sold their s**t for $300-$500”.
The number of academic writings on the topic of burusera appears to be minimal. I did unearth a 2004 discussion paper by Dr. Iria Matsuda (Kobe University, Japan) that examined the cultural discourse surrounding Japanese school uniforms but it only had two paragraphs on burusera with little relating to the sexualized aspect. There was also one paragraph about burusera in a 2011 paper by Amelia Groom in the journal New Voices but only mentioned the existence of the phenomenon. Another 2000 paper by Dr. Yumiko Iida on Japanese identity and the crisis of modernity in the 1990s also mentioned burusera but again it was only mentioned in passing. Unfortunately, the most relevant paper I found was by Dr. S. Kreitz-Sandberg that examined the sexual revolution in Japan during the 1990s and new forms of commercialized sexuality (and most specifically burusera). However, it is written in German and I was unable to work out what was in it.
Given the obvious overlaps with various sexual paraphilias such as urophilia, coprophilia, salirophilia, menophilia, and mysophilia, it’s debatable as to whether burusera can be seen as a sub-genre within these more established sexual behaviours or whether research can be carried out in a standalone manner.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Giard, A. (undated). Arigat-oh! Agnès Giard uncovers Japanese sub-cultural erotica. ISBN Magazine. Located at: http://www.isbn-magazine.com/publications/rene_gruau/agnes-giard/index.html
Groom, A. (2011). Power play and performance in Harajuku. New Voices, 4(1), 188-210.
Iida, Y. (2000). Between the technique of living an endless routine and the madness of absolute degree zero: Japanese identity and the crisis of modernity in the 1990s. Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 8, 423-464.
Kreitz-Sandberg, S. (1998). Sexuelle Revolution im Japan der 90er Jahre? Neue Formen der kommerzialisierten Sexualität von burusera bis enjo kØsai. Minikomi. Informationen des Akademischen Arbeitskreis Japan, 4.
Matsuda, I. (2004). Deliberately regulated consumption? Discourse on school uniforms. Discussion paper (Center for Legal Dynamics of Advanced Market Societies, Kobe University
Morana (2008). Burusera. Heaven 666, February 19. Located at: http://www.heaven666.org/burusera-24070.php
Ryang, S. (2006). Love in Modern Japan: Its Estrangement from Self, Sex and Society. London: Routledge.
Suzuki, N. (2007). Love in modern Japan: Its estrangement from self, sex and society. Social Science Japan Journal, 10(1), 143-146.
Vembu, V. (2008). On sale: Beijing cheergirls dirty lingerie. DNA India, September 13. Located at: http://www.dnaindia.com/world/1189777/report-on-sale-beijing-cheergirls-dirty-lingerie
Wikipedia (2013). Burusera. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burusera
A step too far: Crush fetishism and ‘animal torture porn’ (revisited)
In previous blogs, I have examined both crush fetishism and zoosadism. A crush fetish is a sexual fetish in which an individual derives sexual arousal from watching (or fantasizing about) someone of the opposite sex crushing items (e.g., toys, cigarettes, mobile phones, laptops), food (e.g., fruit), and (in extreme cases) small animals and insects, and/or being stepped on, sat upon, and/or crushed on by a person. Zoosadism refers to the pleasure – often sexual – that individuals attain by causing sadistic cruelty to animals. These bizarre and (in some cases) depraved behaviours recently made the headlines in America following the arrests of women for appearing in an ‘animal torture porn’ video.
In the first case, 28-year old Sara Zamora, a woman from Florida (USA) was arrested following her appearance in a zoosadistic fetish video entitled ‘SOS Barn’. According to various newspaper reports, Zamora is seen engaged in various sexual acts while crushing and killing rabbits (including ‘karate’ chopping their legs) and decapitating chickens. According to a report in the Miami Herald Newspaper the video was made purely for the “sexual gratification of its viewers”. The Herald report alleges that:
“In one clip of ‘SOS Barn’, Miami-Dade police say, Zamora gropes a man’s genitals with her left hand while ‘repeatedly cutting a chicken’s neck using hedge clippers with her right.’ In others, she posed ‘in a sexy outfit’ after hacking off the head of another screaming bird, or she beat chickens to death with a wooden stick…’It’s certainly horrifying. I mean these are sadistic people inflicting gruesome suffering on innocent and vulnerable and helpless animals’ said [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’] Cruelty Casework Director Stephanie Bell…So-called ‘crush’ animal torture videos aren’t new and have been the target of past legal crackdowns. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law that outlawed depictions of animals being ‘intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed’, saying it was too broad and violated the right to free speech”.
The film was made at the house of (and presumably by) Adam Redford. Unfortunately, no-one knows exactly when the video was made and therefore “the statute of limitations may have expired”.
Not long after the arrest of Zamora, a second American woman – 29-year old Stephanie Hird from Arkansas (performing under her stage name ‘Megan Jones’) – was also arrested for her role in the ‘SOS Barn’ video. Described by the New York Daily Times as an “animal snuff film starlet”, Hird allegedly shot animals with an air rifle while tied down or being crushed (at least according to court documents that the newspaper had managed to get hold of. According to her social media profiles, Hird’s sexual fetishes also including foot tickling and bondage, as well as being interested in various aspects of macrophilia and microphilia (which I have covered in previous blogs). The New York Daily News story also reported that:
“Hird also appeared in the [The Learning Channel] show ‘Strange Sex’ to help a man realize his dream of being with a giant woman. The episode uses special effects to make the woman appear as if she were several-hundred-feet tall and towering over cities before manhandling her victim. ‘I love being considered a giantess and a goddess’ a smiling Hird tells the camera behind the scenes of the show. ‘Guys love being overpowered. They like being controlled. They like, you know, a woman being in charge – like she should be”.
As I noted in my previous blogs, there has been little empirical research on either crush fetishism or zoosadism, and most academically published papers are case reports. Since I published my blog on crush fetishism, some of my readers will be aware of the case study I published on a man (that I gave the pseudonym of ‘Brad’) with eproctophilia (i.e., sexual arousal to flatulence) in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The reason I mention this is that one of the other sexual fetishes that Brad also had was crush fetishism. Brad claimed he had this fetish “since birth” and went on to explain further:
“[I have another fetish that] am not proud of, but it exists and may help your study. I have a crush fetish, which is essentially arousal from seeing people step on objects or insects. This particular one has had a lot of bad publicity. As for this one, I can’t tell you where it originated. I remember rubbing myself in my crib as a baby to such thoughts, leading me to believe I may have literally been born with it. I could have been no older than 2½ years old. Keep in mind, these are very primal memories which are mostly a blur. All I recall is that around the time of those memories, I would also rub myself to the thought of someone stepping on an insect, or sometimes a machine made to crush up children like myself. Come to think of it, that last one may have been caused by seeing an apple cider press as a toddler. I also seem to recall that, and being afraid of it because of how it ‘hurt’ the apples”.
I also asked Brad if he thought there was any connection between his crush fetish and his eproctophilia. He responded that if there was any connection, it concerned “the idea of the duality” in that he would not expect to see a woman fart in front of him and similarly, he would not expect a woman to kill an insect in front of him for no real reason. In relation to his crush fetish, he also reported:
“It’s my oldest fetish with no known origin, and I like it for about the same reason as eproctophilia. Maybe that I also disliked seeing people kill bugs as a kid, while also finding it arousing. I was quite the pacifist. Also, when I first discovered ejaculation, I made the connection that ejaculating was somewhat like when a bug is stepped on. I thought about a bug squirting under pressure and then I would do the same. May or may not be relevant, but it was a connection I made as a kid”.
While this is only a small insight into the mind of a crush fetishist, the scientific value of case studies includes their utility in highlighting rare phenomena as well as their role in the generation of new research questions and hypotheses (observations made by Dr. Terry Vasey and Dr. Paul Vasey in a case study of feederism in 2011 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior [ASB]). The case I presented in my own ASB paper hopefully fulfils these values. Clearly, this is just one case study and Brad is unlikely to be representative of the entire eproctophile and/or crush fetish community. Further research is needed to assess the extent to which the case study I reported is representative of eproctophiles and/or crush fetishists more generally, and whether the etiological and developmental pathways are more complex than I initially described in my case study account. I also noted at the end of my paper that Brad “highlights the need for further research into crush fetishism as there are no empirical data on this type of fetish”.
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: CRC Press.
Biles, J. (2004). I, insect, or Bataille and the crush freaks. Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts, 7(1), 115-131.
Huffington Post (2014). Woman tortured, killed animals while filming Brutal Fetish Sex Video: Cops. April 4. Located at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/06/woman-tortured-animals-fetish-video_n_5100535.html
Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Eproctophilia in a young adult male: A case study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42, 1383-1386.
Intentious (2011). Rabbit crushing outrage – Animal snuff film offends. December 9. Located at: http://intentious.com/2011/12/09/rabbit-crushing-outrage-animal-snuff-film-offends/
Kemp, J. (2014). Second fetish model busted in Miami for role in sickening animal torture porn video. New York Daily News, April 17. Located at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/fetish-model-busted-miami-role-animal-torture-porn-article-1.1759487
Miami Herald (2014). Miami woman charged with role in animal torture sex fetish porn video. April 4. Located at: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/04/4040007/miami-woman-charged-with-role.html
Terry, L.L. & Vasey, P.L. (2011). Feederism in a woman. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 639-645.
In visible touch: Does ‘teledildonics’ have a future?
“Online sexual activities no longer are restricted to text, pictures, videos, webcams, and audio. Nowadays, while still in its infancy, we have teledildonics. Teledildonics is essentially a virtual reality application that allows individuals to have sex interactively with people miles away. At present, mobile phones can call up and activate internally worn vibrators. Futurists have dreamed up many other potential ways that technology can be used to pleasure people. In the future, we expect that full body suits will exist that will be able to stimulate all five senses” (Whitty & Fisher, 2008).
“Virtual Reality, or interactive graphical simulations, has been clearly demarcated by the owners of the means of production as an almost exclusively masculine enclave. Almost all applications (at least those that are marketable) respond to specifically male needs, be they physical, emotional, recreational, technical, military or sexual. As with most current Internet commercial activity, female exploitative, male-targeting pornography (‘phallocratic’ applications) will dwarf other applications by the sheer volume of activity. “Teledildonics” (from dildo: artificial penis) will provide unimagined, unlimited and customisable sexual services to male clients” (Walberg, 2006).
“[Male clients will be able to] wriggle into a condom-tight body suit embedded with thousands of miniature electronic sensors, computer controlled to simulate the feel of any object from rubber to skin. Suitably protected participants could then interface sexually with any partner, real, imaginary, or re-created” (McKie, 1994)
“[Teledildonics is] the virtual-reality technology that may one day allow people wearing special bodysuits, headgear and gloves to engage in tactile sexual relations from separate, remote locations via computers connected to phone lines” (Chicago Tribune, 1993).
“Futurologists are predicting drugs which sort out every kind of sexual malfunction and switch libido on and off like a light, ‘teledildos’ operated by computer for those who like to be probed from afar and underwear packed with sensors for couples bored with the limitations of current video games” (Twinn, 2007).
As these opening quotes demonstrate, visions of sex in the future are commonplace and often mention ‘teledildonics’. According to Wikipedia, the term ‘teledildonics’ was coined by hypertext inventor Ted Nelson in his 1974 self-published book Computer Lib/Dream Machines. In his book, Nelson hypothetically described a computer system that could translate sound waves into tactile sensations that could be affected in or on the body via user-operated stimulator device (i.e., a wired sensor system that was capable of converting sound into tactile sensations). However, a short article written by Charles Platt describes a teledildonic hardware device (but does not use the term itself):
“Many men display more affection for their cars than their wives; perhaps the ultimate love-object could be a plastic thing, with many alternative orifices, offering various tactile qualities, shapes and depths…The idea of something like a long sausage, vibrating softly, full of warm treacle, has certain attractions as a sexual toy”.
More recently, it was Howard Rheingold’s essay ‘Teledildonics: Reach Out and Touch Someone’ in a 1990 issue of the cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000 that popularized the concept and is viewed by many as a ‘must read’ for anyone (as Jane Fader asserts) “interested in the intersection of sex and technology, social networks and identity, or history of thought”. I first came across the word in 1993 when I appeared on a Channel 4 television documentary talking about video game sexploitation (in fact, Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices defines ‘teledildonics’ as “sexual arousal from computer sex games”). The online Urban Dictionary defines it as the “computer-mediated sexual interaction between the [virtual reality] presences of two humans”. Alternatively, Wikipedia claims that teledildonics refers to:
“…electronic sex toys that can be controlled by a computer to reach orgasm. Promoters of these devices have claimed since the 1980s they are the ‘next big thing’ in cybersex technology. ‘Teledildonics’ can also refer to the integration of telepresence with sex that these toys make possible. In its original conception, this technology was to have been used for remote sex (or, at least, remote mutual masturbation) where the physical sensations of touch could be transmitted over a data link between the participants. Sex toys that can be manipulated remotely by another party are currently coming onto the market”.
For Rob Baedeker, author of the article ‘Virtual Sex’ on the Web MD website, teledildonics (or cyberdildonics as he also calls it) simply relates to any sex toy that can be controlled via a computer. To give an example, Baedeker describes a wireless vibrator called the ‘Sinulator’ that works via an online application controlled by somebody other than the person that physically has the vibrator. He also describes the ‘Interactive Fleshlight’ corollary – “a penis sleeve for men that transmits in-and-out action into vibrations for the Sinulator on the other end”. For his article, Baedeker interviewed Regina Lynn, author of Sexual Revolution 2.0 who in relation to teledildonics was quoted as saying:
“It’s not sex but it is sex I don’t like the phrase ‘virtual sex’ because it trivializes the experience. There are many ways to share sex with people in virtual spaces, and you still have to communicate to the other person what you like and don’t like. It’s such a mental and emotional experience. That’s part of what turns people on”.
However, now that we have Skype where couples can have mutual masturbation sessions with each other real-time and face-to-face, it does beg the question whether teledildonics has a future. It will ultimately come down to whether individuals want and/or prefer tactile over visual cues from their sexual partner. As Antal Haans and Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn note in a 2009 conference paper they wrote on telepresence:
“Touching is an important part of our social interaction repertoire. Despite the significance of touch, current communication devices rely predominantly on vision and hearing. In recent years, however, several designers and researchers have developed prototypes that allow for mediated social touch; enabling people to touch each other over a distance by means of haptic and tactile feedback technology…Designers of such systems conjecture that the addition of a haptic or tactile communication channel will enrich mediated interactions, and generally refer to the symbolic and intrinsic (e.g., recovery from stress) functions of social touch, as well as to the supposed intimate nature of addressing the skin…Interestingly, in the domain of internet-based adult toys there are several commercial systems available that take advantage of combining tactile stimulation with visual feedback”.
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: CRC Press.
Baedeker, R. (2009). Everything you’ve been afraid to ask about sex in cyberspace. Web MD. Located at: http://www.webmd.com/men/features/virtual-sex
Cybersex (2014). Teledildonics. Located at: http://cybersex.wikispaces.com/Teledildonics
Castronova, E. (2009). Fertility and virtual reality. Washington & Lee Law Review, 66, 1085-1126.
Fader, J. (2010). ‘Teledildonics’ by Howard Rheingold. September 15. Located at: http://janefader.com/teledildonics-by-howard-rheingold-mondo-2000-1990/
Haans, A., & IJsselsteijn, W. A. (2009). I’m always Touched by Your Presence, Dear”: Combining mediated social touch with morphologically correct visual feedback. Proceedings of Presence 2009.
McKie, D. (1994). Cybersex, Lies and Computer Games. In Green, L. (Ed.), Framing Technology. NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Twinn, F. (2007). The Miscellany of Sex: Tantalizing Travels Through Love, Lust and Libido. London: Arcturus.
Walberg, S. (2006). The ideological and cultural processes that represent new communications technologies as’ masculine’. Located at: http://serge.walberg.tripod.com/GenderEssay.pdf
Whitty, M.T., & Fisher, W.A. (2008). The sexy side of the internet: An examination of sexual activities and materials in cyberspace. In A. Barak (Ed.), Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace: Theory, Research, Applications (pp. 185-208). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wikipedia (2014). Teledildonics. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics
Glued to the scene: A brief look at ‘stuck fetishism’
“[There] is a natural or unexpected form of bondage where girls step into cement, wander into spider webs or sink into quicksand. Often girls find themselves in perilous or humiliating situations like being in danger of sinking under quicksand or unable to stop the advances of a horny teenager after having stepped into superglue” (Weird and Sexy website).
“I was chatting via email with a friend of mine and we both agreed on the idea of being glue into and trapped in sexy clothing would be a very hot thing to do. A pair of very high heel patent leather boots for example. Certainly it would get me past my midnight witching hour with my latex panties. Imagine the thick gelatinous glue being poured into my latex catsuit and being made to put it on…anyway we’re still trying to figure out what glue would work well, enough to trap but nothing that would last forever” (Doll’s Realm website).
One of the strangest fetishes that I have come across is ‘stuck fetishism’ that comprises individuals deriving sexual pleasure and arousal from other individuals and/or themselves being immobilized in some way in a ‘sticky situation’ (either literally or metaphorically). It was while I was researching a previous blog on three other sexual paraphilias – claustrophilia (deriving sexual arousal from being confined in small places) taphephilia, (deriving arousal from being buried alive) and wamming/sploshing (deriving sexual arousal from wet and /or messy [WAM] situations) – that I first encountered online references to stuck fetishes and came across the quotes that opened today’s blog. According to an article on ‘stuck fetishism’ in the Nation Master online encyclopedia, not only does the fetish involve immobilization, but sexual arousal is also gained from the individual struggling to escape from the situation. There may be elements of both sexual sadism (and domination) and sexual masochism (bondage and submission) in these scenarios, but the primary focus of the arousal is actually being stuck and/or trapped. The Nation Master article also states:
“Often a certain body part is the focus of such situations, the most common being the feet, although the hands, buttocks, or even ‘full-body’ situations are also quite popular. Other focuses may exist, such as when the subject is wearing a certain article of clothing; certain types of shoes (e.g., high heels) or hosiery are popular examples. The immobilization can involve an object. One form of this is arousal over vehicles that are stuck in mud. There is still a human element since there is a driver at the controls. Some stuck fetishists like to get stuck themselves, while some like to see other people get stuck. Some stuck fetishists enjoy either situation…An overlap between fetishes [bondage, WAM] doesn’t necessarily imply that a person who likes one also likes the other one, however”.
The article also claimed (without any supporting empirical evidence) that stuck fetishists prefer specific situations above all others, and that it typically involves one of the following scenarios:
- Sticky substance immobilization fetish: Here, the individual is rendered immobile and gains sexual arousal from being in direct contact with real sticky or ‘gooey’ substance such as glues (e.g., superglue), melted candy, chewing gum, tar, or is rendered immobile from a fictional organic substance (such as being stuck in a giant spider web).
- Non-sticky substance immobilization fetish: Here the individual is rendered immobile and derives sexual arousal from a substance that is not sticky but stops the individual from being able to move such as quicksand, mud and cement.
- Situational immobilization fetish: Here, the individual is rendered immobile and gains sexual arousal from being confined and/or wedged in a narrow space.
- Perceived situational immobilization fetish: Here, the individual is rendered immobile and gains sexual arousal from a perception that they are confined and/or wedged in a narrow space (e.g., the individual is hypnotized into thinking they are stuck and/or immobile).
- Stuck clothing fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from something that is stuck to the individual’s body (e.g., a shoe, a piece of clothing, a whole clothing outfit, fetish outfits). Such stuck fetishes may overlap with paraphilic transvestism, rubber fetishes, Furry Fandom outfits, and ‘costume play’ more generally.
- Stuck transport fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from being stuck in (or on) a particular form of transport (e.g., a car stuck in a muddy field, a tube train stuck in a tunnel, a bus stuck at the bottom of an icy hill, etc.).
- Stuck transformation fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from being stuck in a particular persona as part of a transformation fetish (that I covered in-depth in a previous blog).
- Stuck multi-person fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from being stuck in a situation with one or more other individuals (e.g., two are more people stuck in the same tight space, two people trapped inside a horse costume).
- Stuck conjoinment fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from a fantasy where separate individuals’ bodies have been merged or fused.
These fetishes while specific may not be mutually exclusive, and some stuck fetishists may gain sexual arousal from more than one of these scenarios, and in some instances the scenarios might be confined (e.g., being stuck inside a broken down car). The Nation Master article also claims:
“There are many obstacles inherent in realizing such ‘sticky situations’ among fetishists. Although ‘surprise’ and ‘authenticity’ are usually traits that are highly sought after, they are difficult to attain in reality. Surprising an unknowing and possibly unwilling individual raises obvious ethical questions. Authenticity is difficult to attain because the substances involved are often expensive and hard to clean up, as well as being potentially dangerous (tar, for example). These issues, coupled with the fact the stuck fetish is still fairly obscure with a relatively small number of (mostly male) participants, means that the online community relies heavily upon fictional stories and pictures created within the community and occasionally media culled from popular culture and other outside sources”.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that there is no scientific research on the topic of stuck fetishism so the claims made by the Nation Master article that it is a mainly male-based fetish and “obscure” cannot be verified (although both assertions have good face validity and could be argued to be commonsense based on what we know about other similar fetishes). However, the fetish does appear to exist as evidenced by dedicated websites and forums such as the Stuck Head First website, the Stuck and Struggle website, and The Sticky Review website, as well as online discussions on topics such as ‘glue bondage’ at websites such as the Alt Bondage Narkive and The Bound Forum. Given the inherent medical dangers inherent in some of the scenarios (such as playing with superglue or cement), the most likely way of case studies entering the academic literature will be in the form of medical papers reporting on cases where something untoward and/or life-threatening occurs.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Gates, K. (2000). Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex. New York: RE/Search Publications.
Nation Master (2013). Stuck fetishism. Located at: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Stuck-Fetishism
Wikipedia (2013). Wet and messy fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_and_messy_fetishism
Saying power: The greatest (and funniest) sex quotes of all time
For a number of years now, I have been collecting famous and not-so-famous quotes about various aspects of sexual behaviour. Some of these are funny, some satirical, some literary, some poignant, and some just make you think about sex in a slightly different way. Obviously I can’t take any credit for this collection apart from the way I have edited and categorized the quotes. I hope you find something here that tickles your fancy.
General quotes about sex
- “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power” (Oscar Wilde)
- “Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant” (George Burns)
- “Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it” (Richard Feynman)
- “There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL” (P.J. O’Rourke)
- “Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it” (Woody Allen)
- “An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex” (Aldous Huxley)
- “Sex is emotion in emotion” (Mae West)
- “Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other” (Marquis de Sade)
- “Sex is the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble” (John Barrymore)
- “Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets” (Andy Warhol)
- “My brain: it’s my second favorite organ” (Woody Allen)
- “Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful – provided you get between the right man and the right woman” (Woody Allen)
- “Is sex dirty? Only if it’s done right” (Woody Allen)
- “Sex on television can’t hurt you unless you fall off” (Anon)
- “Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. ‘Yes’ is the answer’” (Swami X)
- “It is not sex that gives the pleasure, but the lover” (Marge Piercy)
- “Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable” (Lord Chesterfield)
- “The tragedy is when you’ve got sex in the head instead of down where it belongs” (D.H. Lawrence)
- “I’d like to meet the man who invented sex and see what he’s working on now” (Anon)
- “Sex is interesting, but it’s not totally important. I mean it’s not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement” (Charles Bukowski)
- “Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night’ (Rodney Dangerfield)
- “Sex appeal is 50% what you’ve got and 50% what people think you’ve got” (Sophia Loren)
Sex and reproduction
- “It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins” (Chinese Proverb)
- “Familiarity breeds contempt – and children” (Mark Twain)
- “Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around” (David Lodge)
- “The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the ‘Four F’s’: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating” (Marvin Dunnette)
- “Kids in back seats cause accidents, accidents in back seats cause kids” (Anon)
- “The best contraceptive is a glass of cold water. Not before or after, but instead” (Anon)
- “My father told me all about the birds and the bees, the liar – I went steady with a woodpecker till I was twenty-one” (Bob Hope)
Sex and love
- “The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it” (Woody Allen)
- “Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it’s one of the best” (Woody Allen)
- “Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions” (Woody Allen)
- “Love is a matter of chemistry, but sex is a matter of physics” (Anon)
- “Love ain’t nothing but sex misspelled” (Harlan Ellison)
- “Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin – it’s the triumphant twang of a bedspring” (S.J. Perelman)
Men on female sexuality
- “My girlfriend always laughs during sex, no matter what she’s reading” (Steve Jobs
- “You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither” (Steve Martin)
- “My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch” (Jack Nicholson)
- “Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet” (Robin Williams)
- “Women need a reason to have sex Men just need a place” (Billy Crystal)
- “When a man goes on a date, he wonders if he is going to get lucky. A woman already knows” (Frederike Ryder)
- “I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them” (Jay McInerney)
- “Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite” (Mignon McLaughlin)
- “My wife is a sex object – every time I ask for sex, she objects” (Les Dawson)
- “Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach flunked geography” (Robert Byrne)
- “Men get laid, but women get screwed” (Quentin Crisp)
- “Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man” (Mignon McLaughlin)
Women on male sexuality
- “I admit I have a tremendous sex drive. My boyfriend lives forty miles away” (Phyllis Diller)
- “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other” (Jane Austen)
- “Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships” (Sharon Stone)
- “Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among women, intimacy sometimes results in sex” (Barbara Cartland)
- “I know nothing about sex, because I was always married” (Zsa Zsa Gabor)
- “Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands” (Jayne Mansfield)
Masturbation
- “Don’t knock masturbation – it’s sex with someone I love” Woody Allen
- “Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand” (Woody Allen)
- “I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own” (Woody Allen)
- “Masturbation: The primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it’s a cure” (Thomas Szasz)
- “We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation” (Lily Tomlin)
- “The good thing about masturbation is that you don’t have to get dressed up for it” (Truman Capote)
- “A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation” (Karl Kraus)
Chastity, impotence, and medical problems
- “Lord, grant me chastity and continence…but not yet” (St. Augustine)
- “Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope” (George Burns)
- “There’s a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what’s the problem?” (Dustin Hoffman)
- “Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions” (Aldous Huxley)
- “To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you’re impotent. She can’t wait to disprove it” (Cary Grant)
- “Remember, if you smoke after sex you’re doing it too fast” (Woody Allen)
- “The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul” (William B. Yeats)
- “Nature abhors a virgin – a frozen asset” (Clare Boothe Luce)
Sexual perversion
- “The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform” (Alfred Kinsey)
- “The only unnatural sexual behaviour is none at all” (Sigmund Freud)
- “There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats” (Elton John )
- “Don’t worry, it only seems kinky the first time” (Anon)
- “An erection is like the Theory of Relativity – the more you think about it, the harder it gets” (Anon)
- “I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults” (Gore Vidal)
- “Kinky is using a feather. Perverted is using the whole chicken” (Anon)
- “During sex I fantasize that I’m someone else” (Richard Lewis)
- “It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses” (Mrs. Patrick Campbell)
Pornography
- “Pornography is whatever gives the Judge an erection” (Anon)
- “Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval” (Leonard Rossiter)
- “My reaction to porn films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first 20 minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live” (Erica Jong)
- “The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting” (Gloria Leonard)
- “What’s the difference between art and pornography? A government grant!” (Peter Griffin)
- “Pornography is literature designed to be read with one hand” (Angela Lambert)
- “Pornography is in the loin of the beholder” (Charles Rembar)
- “Pornography is supposed to arouse sexual desires. If pornography is a crime, when will they arrest makers of perfume?” (Richard Fleischer)
- “A dirty book is rarely dusty” (Anon)
- “A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction” (J.G. Ballard)
- “To know the difference between erotica and pornography you must first know the difference between naked and nude” (Bernard Poulin)
- “Playboy exploits sex the way Sports Illustrated exploits sports” (Hugh Hefner)
- “Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it” (D.H. Lawrence)
- “Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men” (John Stoltenberg)
Prostitution
- “I remember the first time I had sex – I kept the receipt” (Groucho Marx).
- “When a guy goes to a prostitute, he’s not paying her for sex, he’s paying her to leave” (Anon)
- “When a man talks dirty to a woman, it’s sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man, it’s $3.95 a minute” (Anon)
- “The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs less” (Brendan Francis Behan)
- “I once knew a woman who offered her honor. So I honored her offer and all night long I was on her and off her” (Anon)
- “I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy” (Tom Clancy)
Sex, psychiatry, and surveys
- “With me, nothing goes right. My psychiatrist said my wife and I should have sex every night. We’ll never see each other!” (Rodney Dangerfield)
- “A student undergoing a word-association test was asked why a snowstorm put him in mind of sex. He replied frankly: ‘Because everything does’” (Honor Tracy)
- “I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a women in my life who would give up lunch” (Erma Bombeck)
- “According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful” (Robert De Niro)
Sex addiction
- “I’m a heroine addict. I need to have sex women who have saved someone’s life” (Mitch Hedberg)“
- “Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact” (Marlene Dietrich)
Sex, God and religion
- “I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty” (John Waters)
- “Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at thirty-five. Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical joke?” (Rita Rudner)
- “The only thing wrong with being an atheist is that there’s nobody to talk to during an orgasm” (Anon)
- “When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities” (Matt Groening)
- “Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love” (Butch Hancock)
- “To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals” (Don Schrader)
- “Sex is God’s joke on human beings” (Bette Davis)
- “Why should we take advice on sex from the Pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!” (George Bernard Shaw)
- “See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time” (Robin Williams)
Infidelity
- “What’s the three words you never want to hear while making love? ‘Honey, I’m home!'” (Ken Hammond)
- “You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct” (W. Somerset Maugham)
- “Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?” (Murray Banks)
Give me strength: Another brief look at muscle worship
In previous blogs I have examined sthenolagnia (a sexual paraphilia in which individuals derive sexual pleasure and sexual arousal from individuals displaying strength or muscles). Another related behaviour is cratolagnia where – according to Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices – individuals derive sexual arousal and pleasure more generally from displays of strength (rather than muscles in and of themselves). Following that blog, I received a couple of emails from two males who suggested that I should write a blog on ‘muscle worship’ that although having a sexual aspect, is not the only aspect. According to the Wikipedia entry on muscle worship:
“Muscle worship is a social behaviour, usually with a sexual aspect (a form of body worship), in which a participant, the worshipper, touches the muscles of another participant, the dominator, in sexually arousing ways, which can include rubbing, massaging, kissing, licking, “lift and carry”, and various wrestling holds. The dominator is almost always either a bodybuilder, a fitness competitor, or wrestler, an individual with a large body size and a high degree of visible muscle mass. The worshipper is often, but not always, skinnier, smaller, and more out of shape”.
According to a couple of academic authors, muscle worshippers can be of either gender, and of any sexual orientation, although many authors appear to suggest it is more prevalent among gay men who view bodybuilders as little more than ‘sex objects’ and because bodybuilding is common among members of the gay community (see for instance: Benoit Denizet-Lewis’s 2009 book America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life, or John Edward Campbell’s 2004 book Getting it on Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity). A quick search online also suggests there is a large gay pornographic market for muscle worship along with numerous webcam muscle worship sites. Muscle worship appears to have crossovers with other sexually paraphilic behaviour such as sexual masochism. As the Wikipedia entry notes:
“The amount of forceful domination and pain used in muscle worship varies widely, depending on the desires of the participants. Sometimes, the dominator uses his or her size and strength to pin a smaller worshiper, forcing the worshipper to praise the dominator’s muscles, while in other cases, the worshiper simply feels and compliments the muscles of a flexing dominator. Male and female bodybuilders offer muscle worship sessions for a price in order to supplement their low or nonexistent income from bodybuilding competitions. Paid sessions sometimes involve sexual gratification, even when well-known competitors are involved, they offer fans the chance to meet in person and touch a highly muscular man or woman”.
A 2008 paper by Dr. Niall Richardson (2008) in the Journal of Gender Studies also made some interesting (and important) distinctions between muscle worship and two other erotic practices often associated with bodybuilding: ‘hustling’ and ‘sponsorship fantasies’. More specifically, Richardson wrote:
“Alan Klein describes ‘hustling’ as ‘the selling of implicit or explicit sex by a bodybuilder’ (1987, p. 132) and this can range from doing stripogram type work to engaging in full penetrative sex. Likewise muscle-worship is not to be confused with ‘sponsorship’ or ‘growth fantasies’. Katie Arnoldi’s superb first novel, Chemical Pink (a book which will probably become as revered a text for cultural critics of bodybuilding as Sam Fussell’s Muscle [1991]) describes, often in lurid detail, the horrors of female bodybuilding sponsorship. In Chemical Pink, Arnoldi depicts the ‘sponsorship’ agreement between female bodybuilder Aurora and her sponsor Charles. It soon becomes evident that Charles has a Pygmalion fantasy and gains supreme pleasure from his manipulation of Aurora’s body, feeding her endless protein-rich meals and hefty cycles of anabolic steroids and growth hormones (Arnoldi 2001, pp. 100–102, 111). While Henry Higgins delighted in shaping Eliza’s social graces, the muscle sponsor wants to build and shape his idealized female body and, as such, muscle-sponsorship can be compared to other sexual fantasies, such as ‘feederism’, in which the manipulation of the sexual partner’s weight is the sexual pleasure”.
What I found most interesting here is how various aspects of Muscle Worship are compared to both mainstream (i.e., prostitution) and not-so-mainstream (e.g., feederism) sexual behaviours. Another short article I read on muscle fetishism (outside of the gay community as it concerned female muscle growth) on the Sex and the University website suggested that there were also links with macrophilia (sexual arousal from giants) and breast expansion fetishes:
“Female muscle growth (FMG) is a fantasy genre involving muscular growth of a woman. Many who enjoy these fantasies are attracted to Female bodybuilding or other muscular women. This interest frequently centers on the biceps. FMG is related to the growth fantasies giantess and breast expansion fetishism. This fantasy is sometimes about an equalization or reversal of the stereotypical power relationship (that some people imagine/take for granted) in a heterosexual couple”.
As I noted in my previous blog on sthenolagnia, FMG devotees frequent places where female body builders are found (e.g., gyms, health clubs, bodybuilding tournaments, etc.). However, I also noted that some FMG devotion may be based in fantasy rather than actuality, particularly if it is related to aspects of macrophilia and transformation fetishes (both of which I covered in previous blogs). For instance, Marvel Comics character ‘She-Hulk’ is a popular representation of FMG fantasy and can be found on websites such as the Female Muscle Factory. Although there is little in the way of academic research on the topic, many devotees of Muscle Worship appear to be sexually aroused by an equalization (or reversal) of the stereotypical power relationship among heterosexual couples.
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: CRC Press.
Assael, S. (2007). Steroid Nation. New York: ESPN Books.
Burt, J. (2007). Top five freaky fetishes. The Sun, September 7. Located at: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/21158/Top-five-freaky-fetishes.html
Campbell, E. (2004). Getting it on Online: Cyberspace, Gay male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity. London: Routledge.
Carson, H.A. (2010). A Roaring Girl: An interview with the Thinking Man’s Hooker. Bloomington, Indiana: Author House.
Denizet-Lewis, B. (2009). America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Klein, A.M. (1993). Little Big Men: Bodybuilding Subculture and Gender Construction. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Richardson, N. (2008): Flex-rated! Female bodybuilding: feminist resistance or erotic spectacle? Journal of Gender Studies, 17, 289-301
Sex and the University (2008). Sthenolagnia: Muscle fetishism. Located at: http://sexandtheuniversity.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/sthenolagnia-muscle-fetishism/
Steele, V. (1996). Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wikipedia (2012). Muscle worship. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_worship
Self-expression of interest: A brief look at extreme body modification
One of the more noticeable ‘extreme’ trends is that of body modification. Arguably the most common (and socially acceptable) forms of body modification are ear piercing and tattoos, followed by various other types of piercings (e.g., nipple piercings) and various types of plastic surgery (e.g., rhinoplasty [nose jobs] and breast augmentation [boob jobs]). More extreme types include foot binding, extreme corseting, branding, amputation, and genital cutting. Such types of actions are known as ‘acquired characteristics’ as they cannot be genetically passed on to the individuals’ children. As the body modification section of the Wikipedia entry on acquired characteristics notes:
“Body modification is the deliberate altering of the human body for any non-medical reason, such as aesthetics, sexual enhancement, a rite of passage, religious reasons, to display group membership or affiliation, to create body art, shock value, or self-expression. The frequency of occurrence depends on the location, extent, and number of modifications, and, perhaps most importantly, on the mind of each individual being asked to accept the modifications on another”.
In a recent issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dr. David Veale and Dr. Joe Daniels added that:
“Body modification is a term used to describe the deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons (e.g., self-expression). It is invariably done either by the individual concerned or by a lay practitioner, usually because the individual cannot afford the fee or because it would transgress the ethical boundaries of a cosmetic surgeon. It appears to be a lifestyle choice and, in some instances, is part of a subculture of sadomasochism. It has existed in many different forms across different cultures and age”.
These definitions of body modification would also appear to include such practices as circumcision (although this may of course be done for legitimate medical reasons as well as cultural and/or religious rites of passage). Other ‘extreme’ forms of body modification include:
- Earlobe stretching: This refers to the gradual stretching of the earlobe through the gradual increase in size of piercing rings. This is typically carried out for aesthetic reasons, self-expression and/or group membership.
- Branding: This refers to the deliberate burning of the skin to produce an irreversible symbol, sign, ornament and/or pattern on human skin. This is typically carried out for group membership reasons (but can also be carried out for aesthetics and/or self-expression).
- Subdermal Implants (pocketing): This refers to a type of body jewelry placed underneath the skin and often used in conjunction with other forms of body modification. The body then ‘heals’ over the implant leading to a raised (sometimes 3-D) design. This is almost always done for aesthetic reasons and/or shock value.
- Extraocular implants: This refers to the placing of small pieces of jewelry in the eye by cutting the surface layer of the eye following a surgical incision. Again, this is almost always done for aesthetic reasons and/or shock value.
- Corneal tattooing: This is the practice of injecting a colour pigment into the eye. As with the previous two examples, this is almost always done for aesthetic reasons and/or shock value.
- Tongue splitting: This refers to the splitting of the tongue so that the tongue looks like (for instance) a serpent’s tongue.
- Tooth filing: This refers to the practice of filing teeth (often into the shape of sharp pointed fangs). This may be done for a variety of reasons including group membership, aesthetics and/or self-expression.
- Tightlacing (waist training, corset training): This refers to the use of incredibly tight fitting corsets (typically by women) to produce an archetypal ‘hourglass’ figure. This is typically carried out for aesthetic reasons.
- Pearling (genital beading): This refers to the permanent insertion of small beads beneath the skin of the genitals (such as the labia in women or the foreskin in men). Most of those who engage in pearling do it for aesthetic and/or sexual enhancement reasons (e.g., to increase sexual stimulation during vaginal or anal intercourse).
- Anal stretching: This refers to the gradual stretching of the anus with the use of specialized built for purpose ‘butt plugs’ (typically carried out for sexual enhancement and stimulation).
- Penis splitting (penile bisection): This is the cutting and splitting of a person’s penis from the glans towards the penis base (and which I covered at length – no pun intended – in a previous blog). This is typically done for reasons of sexual stimulation and fetishistic enhancement for either the self and/or sexual partner (although it has also been done for both religious and/or aesthetic reasons).
A really great 2007 review paper by Dr. Silke Wohlrab and colleagues in the journal Body Image examined all the known motivations for body modification (including tattoos and piercings) based on scientific studies and concluded almost all motivations fell into one or more of the following ten categories:
- Beauty, art, and fashion (i.e., body modification as a way of embellishing the body, achieving a fashion accessory and/or as a work of art).
- Individuality (i.e., body modification as a way of being special and distinctive, and creating and maintaining self-identity).
- Personal narratives (i.e., body modification as a form of personal catharsis, and/or self-expression. For instance, it was claimed that some abused women “create a new understanding of the injured part of the body and reclaim possession through the deliberate, painful procedure of body modification and the permanent marking”).
- Physical endurance (i.e., body modification as a way of testing a person’s own threshold for pain endurance, overcoming personal limits, etc.).
- Group affiliations and commitment (i.e., body modification as part of sub-cultural membership or the belonging to a certain social circle).
- Resistance (body modification as a protest against parents or society).
- Spirituality and cultural tradition (i.e., body modification as part of a spiritual or cultural movement).
- Addiction (i.e., body modification as a physical and/or psychological addiction due to (i) the release of endorphins associated with the pain of undergoing the practice, and/or (ii) the association with memories, experiences, values or spirituality).
- Sexual motivations (i.e., body modification as a way of enhancing sexual stimulation).
- No specific reason (i.e., body modification as an impulsive act without forethought or planning).
The review paper was incredibly thorough and these ten motivations cover everything they came across in the academic study of body modification. Unsurprisingly, the most frequently mentioned motivation was the expression of individuality and the embellishment of the own body. Hopefully I’ll cover some of the more specific body modifications in future blogs.
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: CRC Press.
Lemma, A. (2010). Under the skin: A psychoanalytic study of body modification. London: Routledge.
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Rowanchilde, R. (1996). Male genital modification. Human Nature, 7, 189-215.
Veale, D. & Daniels, J. (2012). Cosmetic clitoridectomy in a 33-year-old woman. Archives of Sex Behavior, 41, 725-730.
Wikipedia (2012). Acquired characteristic. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_characteristic
Wikipedia (2012). Body modification. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_modification
Wikipedia (2012). Penile subincision. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penile_subincision
Wohlrab, S., Stahl, J., & Kappeler, P. M. (2007). Modifying the body: Motivations for getting tattooed and pierced. Body image, 4, 87-95.
The worm that turned on: A beginner’s guide to vermiphilia
In previous blogs I have looked at various sexually zoophilic behaviours relating to ‘creepy crawlies’ of one description or another including ants, bees, and wasps (for instance, my blog on formicophilia in which individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal from insects crawling and/or nibbling on the individual’s genitals). Today’s blog looks at ‘worm sex’ and has been referred to by various different names including vermiphilia, helminthophilia and scoleciphilia (abnormal affection towards worms and/or being infested with worms), along with sub-variants such as taeniophilia /teniophilia (i.e., abnormal affection for tapeworms). None of these sexually paraphilic terms appears in either Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices or Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices.
The words for these alleged sexual practices are in many online A-Z lists of sexual paraphilias and appear to have bee derived from the opposite phobic behaviours (i.e., helminthophobia, scoleciphobia or vermiphobia are all defined as the fear of worms and/or the fear of infestation of worms). For the remainder of this article I will use the term ‘vermophilia’ as I have come across a lot of people in the academic biological worm world using the word ‘vermophilic’ to describe an intense liking for worms (although this appears to be used in the context of having an academic research-like interest in them rather than anything sexual).
It will probably come as no surprise that there is no academic literature on vermiphilia and all the material I have collated in today’s blog can be best described as anecdotal. The only article of any length I have come across on the topic of vermiphilia is by Daikichi Amano who penned an article simply entitled ‘Worm Sex’ for Bizarre magazine (a magazine that I too have written for on a number of sexual paraphilias including hypoxyphilia and apotemnophilia). The article is basically a case study about the owner of the Japanese company called Genki (check out the website here, but please be warned it is very sexually explicit; I also mentioned Genki in a previous blog on formicophilia and described it as a style of erotic art and pornography that features women covered with various creatures – typically insects or small sea creatures). The article actually spends more time talking about the Genki owner’s haemorrhoids and his quest for anal orgasm, but he did write that that:
“I direct films that involve women in sexual congress with all kinds of living sea creatures and reptiles, including dojo loaches, earthworms, frogs, sea cucumbers, octopi and even an anaconda. I didn’t really have any kind of grand concept behind making these films, except I want to make people amazed. And also make something I wanted to watch; at the end of the day, I’m just a very selfish person. This month, I shot a new film featuring mealworms and earthworms. I bought 30kg of them and used them all. I felt bad for the actress but they weren’t cheap, and I’d spent more of the budget on the worms than the actress. Did you know mealworms bite? Apparently, they do and, according to the actress, it’s really painful!”
Looking at this written confession along with some of the films at his Genki website, it’s obvious that as a film director he clearly makes these films for his own (presumably sexual) pleasure and that the actresses who participate appear to get nothing from the act apart from being paid (at least I hope they are getting paid). Whether others watching derive any sexual pleasure and arousal is highly debatable. I would also argue that there are sexually sadistic undertones to the whole process and practice of naked females having worms placed and put into their genital orifices. However, this practice is not restricted to women as I have also found guides to ‘worm torture’ being used within gay sadomasochistic practices in online ‘dehumanization’ sex games (such as those at the Berlin Queer website). Outside of the sadomasochistic scene, I came across this online snippet from a man who claimed:
“I have an odd desire to bathe in a tub full of earthworms, having them squirming all over my body, especially on my [private] parts. Is this safe to try? Is this a common desire?”
In response to this, someone responded:
“Be careful what you wish for. If they are sterile then yes, in theory it’s OK, assuming you can obtain enough to even cover the bottom of the tub. But, you might like to consider that worms have a way of tunnelling into any orifice and the last thing you want is any to invade your body and take up residence, because they could tunnel through into your blood stream and then invade your organs, leading to all kinds of medical problems”.
Another [presumably Japanese] man (an online gamer named ‘Yuri-miki’) had stumbled upon the Genko website and admitted to others in
“I’ve started to consider ‘worms’ as a fetish. But I am not sure whether it is safe or not, so I am here to inquire about that, hopefully some of you might be knowledgeable enough to tell me what’s safe and what isn’t? Currently I have a cautious disposition to believing that worms are completely harmless, no matter what you do?…Earlier today I bought a bundle of 24 worms…I took them all out of the dirt-stuff they came in, washed them, and watched as they squiggled around in a puddle of clean water. The water soon after became a little dirty, and I wondered why. After I put a bundle into my mouth, I felt as they were squiggling around there, trying to either escape or enter down my throat. It was such a weird sensation! I wanted to bite onto them but I didn’t, I was scared that their insides could contain bacteria? When I spat them back into the bowl I opened my mouth and my tongue and teeth were completely covered in worm poop!! I have yet to put them into my ahem or anus. I’m too scared, that’s why I need your help!”
Someone else at the Get Dare online discussion forum claimed that:
“I have a huge fetish of snakes, slugs, worms, eels, etc. My limits: no human sex, I cannot die, no other animals besides things that are slimy, very scaly, or serpentine, no burning down my house. My likes: snake insertion, worm insertion, eel insertion, snake pumping, worm pumping, eel pumping, long insertions (like 30 feet of a green anaconda, yes I have a permit), filling my womb with snakes, eels, and worms, the largest width I will go is a foot across at the very most”.
Obviously I have no way of verifying this or other claims made above but I did find dozens of online video clips of things I’d rather not have seen. Online there are videos that cater for both straight lovers of worm sex (such as those on the Heavy-R website and spin-off webpages) and gay lovers of worm sex (such as those at the PornMD and Gaybeast websites – please be warned all of these links are very sexually explicit). There are also video clips that involve maggots rather than worms that are identical in all but the creature used in a sexual manner. (If you think I’m making all this up – I’m not).
Finally. I feel duty bound to add there is one other type of sexual fetishism that I covered in a previous blog that involves worms, and that is crush fetishism (i.e., a sexual fetish in which an individual derives sexual arousal from watching – or fantasizing about – someone of the opposite sex crushing [e.g., toys, cigarettes, mobile phones, laptops], food (e.g., fruit), and [in extreme cases] small animals and insects). In the case of crushing living organisms, I noted in a previous blog that the acts of killing could be viewed as acts of zoosadism (because of the sexual element). However, the person doing the killing of the animals is usually paid for their ‘services’ and does not appear to get any sexual satisfaction from the act itself. It is the person watching the ‘crush’ videos that typically derive the sexual pleasure from it. In this sense, I argued that the act could be described as a type of ‘zoosadism-by-proxy’ (at least that’s my own take on this).
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: CRC Press.
Amano, D. (undated). Worm sex. Bizarre. Located at: http://www.bizarremag.com/fetish/interviews/6055/worm_sex.html?xc=1
Biles, J. (2004). I, insect, or Bataille and the crush freaks. Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts, 7(1), 115-131.
Dewaraja, R. & Money, J. (1986). Transcultural sexology: Formicophilia, a newly named paraphilia in a young Buddhist male. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 12, 139-145.
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Pearson, G.A. (1991). Insect fetish objects. Cultural Entomology Digest, 4, (November).
