Down in the bumps: A brief look at mpreg (male pregnancy) fetishism

A few weeks ago I read an article in The Hornet entitled ‘10 unusual fetishes and their psychology, from sploshing to male pregnancy’ by Daniel Villarreal. The ten fetishes and sexual paraphilias included (in alphabetical order), (i) amputation fetishes (sexual arousal from the thought of being an amputee [apotemnophilia] and/or sexual arousal from individuals who are amputees – although the article featured just one specific type of amputee fetishism – ‘toe amputation’), (ii) emetophilia (sexual arousal from vomiting), (iii) entomophilia (sexual arousal from bugs and insects), (iv) eproctophilia (sexual arousal from flatulence), (v) looning (sexual arousal from balloons), (vi) macrophilia (sexual arousal from giants), (vii) mpreg fetishism (sexual arousal from male pregnancy), (viii) sploshing (sexual arousal from being ‘wet and messy’ [WAM] and also known as ‘wamming’), (ix) ursusagalmatophilia (sexual arousal from teddy bears), and (x) vorarephilia (sexual arousal from the thought of being eaten often shortened to ‘vore’).

I have covered all of these fetishes and paraphilias in previous articles on my blog with the exception of mpreg fetishism (although I have covered female pregnancy fetishes [maieusiophilia], childbirth fetishism, and impregnation fetishism, as well as an article on Couvade Syndrome [whereby the male partners of pregnant women experience empathetic pregnancy-like symptoms including loss of appetite, morning sickness, constipation, etc. but the male knows he is not pregnant]). According to a 2015 Mamiverse article on strange fetishes:

“While most sexual fetishes are driven by men, mpreg enthusiasts are said to include a lot kinky ladies. It stands for ‘male pregnancy’ and this sexy fetish was said to born from the evolution of gay themed fanfiction, and fangirls somehow taking it to the next level”.

Many aspects of male pregnancy have featured in the national news a lot over the past few years including stories on male pregnancy suits, how new medical procedures such as womb transplants could facilitate male pregnancy, and pregnancy among transgender men such as the UK’s first pregnant men Scott Parker and Hayden Cross (who stopped transitioning so that they could start families) and the film about Jason Barker’s pregnancy (A Deal With The Universe). On top of this, male pregnancy has occasionally featured in the world of entertainment, most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pregnancy in the 1994 film Junior (where he gets pregnant as part of a scientific experiment), Billy Crystal’s pregnancy in the 1978 film Rabbit Test, Commander Trip Tucker’s pregnancy in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, the French film A Slightly Pregnant Man (where a taxi driver suddenly discovers he is four months pregnant), the 2017 comedy MamaBoy, and the and an episode in Futurama where the male alien Kif Kroker gets pregnant (‘Kif Gets Knocked Up A Notch’), as well as Israeli reality TV show Manbirth.

Based on what I have read online, mpreg in fan fiction is a popular topic and some of the more considered writing about reasons for writing about male pregnancy comes down to a subversion of gender stereotypes. A couple of the better essays I found were by Slayer McCoy (‘Mysogyny and the fetishization of queer identities in fan fiction’) and Lady Geek Girl (‘Sexualized Saturdays: Male pregnancy in fanfiction’). I didn’t agree with everything that was said but they did at least try to look at some reasons for the growth and fascination in mpreg fan fiction. As Lady Geeky Girl opines:

“There is fetishism that happens in many mpreg stories. Now again, this isn’t all that much weirder than porn that shows pregnant women having sex, but that doesn’t make either of them okay. Both fetishize pregnancy, which can be rather demeaning, and mpreg has even fetishized conception… And of course there is one thing all mpreg fics have in common—the male characters are reduced to their biological functions. A biological function that in reality isn’t even theirs. They are magically or “scientifically” changed to be able to give birth and then the entire focus of the fic is on the fact that they are pregnant. Most mpreg fics make the entire focus of the fic on the pregnancy and rarely have any outside plot, putting the entire focus on this pregnancy and baby. Furthermore, these fics often take away the male character’s very identity as a man, not just because he gets pregnant, but usually everything about the character is feminized in the most stereotypical and sexist way possible”.

A couple of years ago, another article by Villarreal in The Hornet briefly looked at mpreg fetishes and featured five videos of “sexy men pretending to be pregnant” with some pretending to be in labour, while briefly overviewing the niche gay pornography Film911 website who specialize in other fetish areas that I have written about including muscle worship, vore, belly button fetishes (alvinophilia), and various aspects of medical fetishism, as well as mpreg fetishism. None of these videos depict gay sex and all of them feature gay models who would never entertain the idea of having gay sex on film. In his 2019 article, Villarreal claims that:

“For some, MPREG is entirely about emotional closeness and intimacy between men; MPREG videos and art show male couples being very sweet, vulnerable and nurturing, something rarely seen in porn. For others, MPREG remains inherently erotic and sexual as it involves literal daddies and breeding. MPREG fantasies can also bleed over into ‘feeder’ fantasies of men growing large with food. The MPREG fetish also contains a noteworthy gender component that idealizes sexual equality”.

Villarreal claims that “MPREG fetishists have dreamed up the idea of a secret ‘male vagina’ hiding directly in the anus with its own female-like reproductive system, though some MPREG babies actually get delivered through the male urethra. There’s even a fantasy taxonomy known as the ‘omegaverse’ where omega ‘carriers’ are impregnated by alpha or beta ‘seeders’. The fantasy sex can involve ‘knotting’ where the top’s penis gets so engorged that it gets trapped in the bottom until climax, much like with dogs. There’s even a lesbian omegaverse where female alphas have female penises”.

The largest online mpreg community is ‘MPREG Central’ and whose administrator goes under the pseudonym ‘Lyric’. Lyric was interviewed by Villarreal and was quoted as saying:

“There is a culture of people out there who are drawn to that idea – men and women who, on some level, wish men could really become pregnant just like women. Some women like the idea of having their man carry and birth their kids, while some gay men wish they could have kids together with their own bodies. [My own reason for getting into MPreg fetishism was a] fascination for stomachs and bellybuttons [and] feeling drawn to the mystery of pregnancy”.

Academically, there appears to be very little on mpreg fetishism, and what has been published appears to only concentrate on the fan fiction element of mpreg within slash fiction (i.e., a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex). In a 2018 book chapter by Kristina Busse and Alexis Lothian entitled ‘A history of slash sexualities: Debating queer sex, gay politics and media fan cultures’ (in The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality), there is a section on ‘queerer, kinkier worlds exploring desire’ where MPreg is briefly mentioned but not expanded upon:

“The Fanlore entry for ‘kink’ notes that the term ‘usually refers to various non-normative sexual practices or desires, such as voyeurism, fetishism, and the many activities included under the BDSM umbrella’…Fans may also ‘refer to other, non-sexual preferences as ‘kinks’ meaning particular imagery, story-tropes, or elements that they enjoy so much they are worth considerable effort to find and collect’…Within this frame mpreg and domestic romance become ‘kinks’ whose preference ranks on the same order as love for fiction featuring rope bondage, sexual slavery or water sports”.

Christina Yatrakis wrote a 2013 thesis on fan fiction and again mentioned mpreg in relation to it being a new development among fan fiction writers:

“Within slash communities, new norms or ways of writing have emerged that are widely accepted without much question. Two such creations are male pregnancies (mpreg) and women with male reproductive parts (G!P), either permanently or in lieu of periods. While not all slash readers enjoy, or even accept, these mystical deviations, a subsection of slash producers and consumers have coalesced around these biological anomalies. While there is no record of when such narrative devices first emerged or became common knowledge in different fandoms and online communities, they are no longer only posted on fetish or kink sites. One explanation is that they came from fandoms with supernatural source texts, i.e. Harry Potter or Star Trek. Within a supernatural context, both of these tools can make sense and through their continued reproduction in supernatural fanfics they could have become accepted and spread throughout different fandoms. Additionally, their popularity could be explained by the prevalence of heterosexual girls writing slash fan fiction. By allowing one partner of a same-sex relationship to have natural reproductive abilities, heterosexual female authors can still act out relationship fantasies with childbearing remaining a natural option”.

Kristina Busse also had a chapter on fan fiction in Anne Jamison’s 2013 book Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World. She noted that:

“Mpregs come in all shapes and sizes and, as a result, can fulfil a vast variety of fan desires: a romantic need to create a love child between male lovers, an interest in pregnancy’s emotional and physical fallout on a partnership, or even a fascination with the horrors of forced breeding…mpreg allows a female writer to play out themes of female bodies, concerns of gender in relationships, and issues of reproduction. And she can interrogate all these ideas in a setting that allows for a certain emotional distance by divorcing the pregnancy from the female body. At the same time, one of the criticisms of mpreg is that it often replicates rather than critiques the portrayal of women by embracing stereotypical gender roles”.

Based on my own brief research into the topic, there doesn’t appear to be any empirical evidence as to the popularity or prevalence of individuals’ involvement in mpreg fetishism. Reading about mpreg doesn’t itself mean that readers have a fetish concerning it although membership of online forums suggest small but dedicated communities that love all things mpreg.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Distinguished 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.

Busse, K. (2013). Pon Farr, mpreg, bonds, and the rise of the omegaverse. In A. Jamison (Ed.), Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World (pp. 316-322). BenBella Books.

Busse, K. & Lothian, A. (2018). A history of slash sexualities: Debating queer sex, gay politics and media fan cultures. In: Smith, C., Attwood, F. & McNair, B. (Eds.). The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality. Oxford: Routledge

Gates, K. (2000). Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex. New York: RE/Search Publications.

Lady Geek Girl (2012). Sexualized Saturdays: Male pregnancy in fanfiction. October 13. Located at: https://ladygeekgirl.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/sexualized-saturdays-male-pregnancy-in-fanfiction/

Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.

Mamiverse (2015). 10 kinds of sexual fetishism that make you say WTF? April 12. Located at: http://mamiverse.com/crazy-forms-of-fetishism-90424/7/

McCoy, S. (2016). Mysogyny and the fetishization of queer identities in fan fiction. WattPad.com. Located at: https://www.wattpad.com/692573853-misogyny-and-the-fetishization-of-queer-identities/page/8

Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S. & Jannini, E.A. (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Research, 19, 432-437.

Villarreal, D. (2016). 5 videos of sexy men pretending to be pregnant. The Hornet, April 28. Located at: https://hornet.com/stories/5-videos-of-sexy-men-pretending-to-be-pregnant/

Villarreal, D. (2019). 10 unusual fetishes and their psychology, from sploshing to male pregnancy. The Hornet, March 19. Located at: https://hornet.com/stories/10-unusual-fetishes/

Yatrakis, C. (2013). Fan fiction, fandoms, and literature: or, why it’s time to pay attention to fan fiction. College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 145. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/145

To pee or not to pee? Another look at paraphilic behaviours

Strange, bizarre and unusual human sexual behaviour is a topic that fascinates many people (including myself of course). Last week I got a fair bit of international media coverage being interviewed about the allegations that Donald Trump hired women to perform ‘golden showers’ in front of him (i.e., watching someone urinate for sexual pleasure, typically referred to as urophilia). I was interviewed by the Daily Mirror (and many stories used my quotes in this particular story for other stories elsewhere). I was also commissioned to write an article on the topic for the International Business Times (and on which this blog is primarily based). The IBT wanted me to write an article on whether having a liking for strange and/or bizarre sexual preferences makes that individual more generally deviant.

Although the general public may view many of these behaviours as sexual perversions, those of us that study these behaviours prefer to call them paraphilias (from the Greek “beyond usual or typical love”). Regular readers of my blog will know I’ve written hundreds of articles on this topic. For those of you who have no idea what parahilias really are, they are uncommon types of sexual expression that may appear bizarre and/or socially unacceptable, and represent the extreme end of the sexual continuum. They are typically accompanied by intense sexual arousal to unconventional or non-sexual stimuli. Most adults are aware of paraphilic behaviour where individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal from sex with children (paedophilia), the giving and/or receiving of pain (sadomasochism), dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex (transvestism), sex with animals (zoophilia), and sex with dead people (necrophilia).

However, there are literally hundreds of paraphilias that are not so well known or researched including sexual arousal from amputees (acrotomophilia), the desire to be an amputee (apotemnophilia), flatulence (eproctophilia), rubbing one’s genitals against another person without their consent (frotteurism), urine (urophilia), faeces (coprophilia), pretending to be a baby (infantilism), tight spaces (claustrophilia), restricted oxygen supply (hypoxyphilia), trees (dendrophilia), vomit (emetophilia), enemas (klismaphilia), sleep (somnophilia), statues (agalmatophilia), and food (sitophilia). [I’ve covered all of these (and more) in my blog so just click on the hyperlinks of you want to know more about the ones I’ve mentioned in this paragraph].

It is thought that paraphilias are rare and affect only a very small percentage of adults. It has been difficult for researchers to estimate the proportion of the population that experience unusual sexual behaviours because much of the scientific literature is based on case studies. However, there is general agreement among the psychiatric community that almost all paraphilias are male dominated (with at least 90% of all those affected being men).

One of the most asked questions in this field is the extent to which engaging in unusual sex acts is deviant? Psychologists and psychiatrists differentiate between paraphilias and paraphilic disorders. Most individuals with paraphilic interests are normal people with absolutely no mental health issues whatsoever. I personally believe that there is nothing wrong with any paraphilic act involving non-normative sex between two or more consenting adults. Those with paraphilic disorders are individuals where their sexual preferences cause the person distress or whose sexual behaviour results in personal harm, or risk of harm, to others. In short, unusual sexual behaviour by itself does not necessarily justify or require treatment.

The element of coercion is another key distinguishing characteristic of paraphilias. Some paraphilias (e.g., sadism, masochism, fetishism, hypoxyphilia, urophilia, coprophilia, klismaphilia) are engaged in alone, or include consensual adults who participate in, observe, or tolerate the particular paraphilic behaviour. These atypical non-coercive behaviours are considered by many psychiatrists to be relatively benign or harmless because there is no violation of anyone’s rights. Atypical coercive paraphilic behaviours are considered much more serious and almost always require treatment (e.g., paedophilia, exhibitionism [exposing one’s genitals to another person without their consent], frotteurism, necrophilia, zoophilia).

For me, informed consent between two or more adults is also critical and is where I draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable. This is why I would class sexual acts with children, animals, and dead people as morally and legally unacceptable. However, I would also class consensual sexual acts between adults that involve criminal activity as unacceptable. For instance, Armin Meiwes, the so-called ‘Rotenburg Cannibal’ gained worldwide notoriety for killing and eating a fellow German male victim (Bernd Jürgen Brande). Brande’s ultimate sexual desire was to be eaten (known as vorarephilia). Here was a case of a highly unusual sexual behaviour where there were two consenting adults but involved the killing of one human being by another.

Because paraphilias typically offer pleasure, many individuals affected do not seek psychological or psychiatric treatment as they live happily with their sexual preference. In short, there is little scientific evidence that unusual sexual behaviour makes you more deviant generally.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Abel, G. G., Becker, J. V., Cunningham-Rathner, J., Mittelman, M., & Rouleau, J. L. (1988). Multiple paraphilic diagnoses among sex offenders. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 16, 153-168.

Buhrich, N. (1983). The association of erotic piercing with homosexuality, sadomasochism, bondage, fetishism, and tattoos. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 12, 167-171.

Collacott, R.A. & Cooper, S.A. (1995). Urine fetish in a man with learning disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 39, 145-147.

Couture, L.A. (2000). Forced retention of bodily waste: The most overlooked form of child maltreatment. Located at: http://www.nospank.net/couture2.htm

Denson, R. (1982). Undinism: The fetishizaton of urine. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 27, 336–338.

Greenhill, R. & Griffiths, M.D. (2015). Compassion, dominance/submission, and curled lips: A thematic analysis of dacryphilic experience. International Journal of Sexual Health, 27, 337-350.

Greenhill, R. & Griffiths, M.D. (2016). Sexual interest as performance, intellect and pathological dilemma: A critical discursive case study of dacryphilia. Psychology and Sexuality, 7, 265-278.

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Eproctophilia in a young adult male: A case study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42, 1383-1386.

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

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Bizarre sex. New Turn Magazine, 3, 49-51.

Massion-verniory, L. & Dumont, E. (1958). Four cases of undinism. Acta Neurol Psychiatr Belg. 58, 446-59.

Money, J. (1980). Love and Love Sickness: The Science of Sex, Gender Difference and Pair-bonding, John Hopkins University Press.

Mundinger-Klow, G. (2009). The Golden Fetish: Case Histories in the Wild World of Watersports. Paris: Olympia Press.

Skinner, L. J., & Becker, J. V. (1985). Sexual dysfunctions and deviations. In M. Hersen & S. M. Turner (Eds.), Diagnostic interviewing (pp. 211–239). New York: Plenum Press.

Spengler, A. (1977). Manifest sadomasochism of males: Results of an empirical study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 6, 441–456.

The ugly truth: A brief look at teratophilia

I’m sure I will receive a little criticism for today’s blog as it focuses on sex and ugliness, so I apologize in advance if you feel I shouldn’t be talking about such things and feel it is politically incorrect. However, there is a long history of psychological research on attractiveness (which by implication usually means that any findings reported as relating to attractive people would mean the opposite applies for ugly people). I’m the first to admit that sexual attractiveness is highly subjective and can depend on many factors including the physiological state of the viewer (hence the apt pun that ‘beauty is the eye of the beer holder”).

A couple of years ago, the papers here in the UK (such as the one that appeared in the Daily Mail) reported on a story that being ugly might actually help in attracting the opposite sex. The story was based on the work of Australian Dr. Robert Brooks (a Professor of Evolution at the University of New South Wales) who claimed that having an “unusual appearance” can prove a useful asset in attracting a mate. Brooks was quoted as saying that “ugly individuals can sometimes do better than good-looking ones” (although I ought to point out that his research was carried out on animals and not humans). Dr Paul Rainey, a biologist at Oxford University supported Brooks’ view and said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If everyone is going after the most common characteristics, then someone who targets the rare ones, would have an advantage”.

This short introduction brings me on to what I really wanted to focus on – the sexual paraphilia teratophilia. According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, teratophilia is defined as those people who derive sexual pleasure and arousal from “deformed or monstrous people”. The online Urban Dictionary defines it as “the ability to see beauty in the unusual [and] clinically described as a sexual preference for deformed people”. There are various sub-divisions of teratophilia of which the most researched is arguably acrotomophilia (which I looked at in a previous blog) and refers to those people who derive sexual pleasure and arousal from amputees. I would also argue that sexual paraphilias such as stigmatophilia (i.e., individuals that derive sexual pleasure and arousal from a person who is marked [i.e., scarred] in some way) would also qualify as a sub-type of teratophilia.

Although there is empirical research on both acrotomophilia and stigmatophilia, there is nothing (as far as I can tell) published on teratophilia. There are certainly online forums where individuals have discussed their attraction to ugly people and a quick search on the internet shows there is a fair amount of pornographic material that feature physically unusual people (suggesting that there are people put there that find such things sexually arousing). Here are a few online self-confessions by people who would appear to be genuine teraphiliacs:

• Extract 1 (female): “I’ve felt this way for years, it’s not a new thing. I’ve tried to bring it up before on other forums but no one took me seriously. I think that’s my biggest problem is that people always think I’m joking. I’m not sure if it’s a ‘fetish‘ or what but I don’t necessarily think ‘Oh I wanna have sex with that guy look how deformed he is’ as much as I see them as any other person that I find attractive and would want to date. Just like a guy may find skinny girls attractive or a girl likes guys with tattoos, I think deformities are sexy…But I’m not attracted to everyone and anyone who has some kind of deformity. If they have a bad personality it’s unattractive. So does this really make me a ‘teratophiliac’? Why can’t it be that I can just find beauty within the unusual or something like that? It’s always been a fantasy for me to be with someone like this, I’ve had plenty of normal boyfriends over the years but it still hasn’t made my yearning to be with a deformed man go away. I don’t think I’d be doing harm to act upon my urges would I?”
• Extract 2 (male): “For some reason, women with some deformity, specifically gait deformities and hand deformities are interesting…Women with Multiple Sclerosis can be attractive also. I myself have pectus escavatum, which is an inversion deformity of the chest. The chest is strong, but looks strange. Its muscular, but inverted. This may be why I am interested in women with deformities as well”.
• Extract 3 (female): “I’m attracted to people who I know are ‘ugly’. And it’s not personality because it could just be a random boy around school who I’ve never spoken to before and I just see his face and think I’ve fell in love, even though I know he’s not stereotypically ‘hot’ and my friends would laugh if they knew. It means that I can’t attempt to get anywhere with these ‘ugly’ boys because I know my friends would never let me live it down….I can look at them and pick out faults and know why they’re not hot, but I still am strangely attracted to them”.
• Extract 4 (female): “[I’m] a self-confessed teratophiliac. What do others think? I’m harking back to why I just adore that ice bath scene with Stretch and Bubba. Am I the only one who goes all dippy when I see Bub’s eyes there? Bill did an exceptional job instilling all that personality into Leatherface. Shows he’s human and capable of love but torn apart under pressure from his family. When he bangs his head on the cage it really saddens me…I believe this Leatherface is capable of turning good if he wasn’t ill-bred and pressured by his family. Back to the subject of teratophilia. I would gladly reciprocate bubba’s affections!”

Looking at these accounts (of which three out of four are female – not sure if that’s significant but the majority of anecdotal accounts I came across were female), and assuming they are genuine (and I have no way of knowing if they are), there is little insight as to the motivations and reasoning as to why these individuals are attracted to ugly and/or handicapped people. The one male account does admit that he himself has an “inversion deformity” and that this may provide a reason as to why he finds females with deformities of sexual interest. The Sex Obsessed website also speculated (without any empirical evidence) that those attracted to deformed people:

“…may have a strong sense of compassion or fear for a deformed person and may be conditioned to overexcite their feelings and confuse this excitement for sexual arousal.  It may also include people who feel emotionally secure or in control of their deformed mates as they do not have the ability to leave them for someone else”.

If the number of female accounts is to be believed, it may be an indicator that females are less concerned with sexual attractiveness in a man (i.e., men value attractiveness in women more than women value attractiveness in men). Given the general lack of research in the area, this is a topic that is certainly worthy of scientific investigation.

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.

Kendall, P. (2010). Why ugly men always attract the prettiest women. Daily Mail. Located at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-70897/Why-ugly-men-attract-prettiest-women.html

Locksley (2010). I’m so ugly I make kids cry. Marry me! October 30. Located at: http://www.locksleynet.com/2010/10/30/im-so-ugly-i-make-kids-cry-marry-me/

Sex Obsessed (2009). Dysmorphophilia. December 4. Located at: http://sexobsessed.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/dysmorphophilia/

Wikipedia (2012). Talk: Teratophilia. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ATeratophilia

Disability acts: A beginner’s guide to abasiophilia

In previous blogs I have examined both medical fetishism (individuals who are sexually aroused by medical procedures and/or people wearing medical accessories) and different forms of amputee fetishism (including individuals who are sexually aroused by amputees [acrotomophilia] or those who are sexually aroused by the thought of being an amputee [apotemnophilia]). One sexual paraphilia that intersects both of these is abasiophilia. There is relatively little specific research on abasiophilia (as most of the academic literature has studied sexual amputee fetishes and paraphilias). In non-academic writing, the only reference I am aware in The Scarecrow, a novel by American author Michael Connelly where Wesley Carver the serial killer was motivated by abasiophilia. (As the Wikipedia entry on the novel notes: “the murdered women were both exotic dancers with similar body types (‘giraffes’), and that both were put in leg braces (‘iron maidens’) while being sexually abused before death…[the police’s research] revealed that Carver’s mother was an exotic dancer similar in appearance to the victims who needed to wear leg braces when not performing”).

According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, abasiophilia is defined as a “love of (or sexual attraction to) people who use leg braces or other orthopedic appliances”. However, there are a number of slightly different definitions depending upon which source is consulted. Nancy Butcher, in her 2003 book The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore. Abasiophilia is “a psychosexual attraction to people with impaired mobility, especially those who use orthopaedic appliances such as leg braces, orthopedic leg bracees, orthopedic casts, and/or wheelchairs”. Francesca Twinn in her 2007 book The Miscellany of Sex defines it as a “sexual attraction to people with mobility facilitator especially equipment such as braces or wheelchairs”. Finally, Dr. George Pranzarone in his 2000 Dictionary of Sexology notes that abasiophilia is:

“A paraphilia of the eligibilic/stigmatic type in which sexuoerotic arousal and facilitation or attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent on the partner being lame, with a limp, or crippled [from Greek, abasios lameness + -philia]”

The term abasiophilia was coined (as are many other sexual paraphilias that I have covered in my blogs) by US sexologist Professor John Money in a paper published in a 1990 issue of Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality. Professor Money’s definition was that abasiophilia referred to an erotic focus on a partner who is “lame, crippled, or unable to walk”. Professor Money’s paper described two case reports both of who were women. The first case was a 42-year old woman with an amputee paraphilia (i.e., acrotomophilia) while the second case was a woman in her thirties with a lameness paraphilia (i.e., abasiophilia).

Although the name for the condition was new, the condition itself was not as case studies dating back more than 50 years have been reported – most notably a paper in a 1960 issue of the American Journal of Psychotherapy by Dr. M. Fleischl. He described “a man’s fantasy of a crippled girl” and said it was a case of ‘orthopedic fetishism’. However, as Dr Joel Milner, Dr Cynthia Dopke, and Dr Julie Crouch note in a 2008 review of paraphilias not otherwise specified [NOS] noted:

“[Abasiophilia] does not appear to qualify as fetishism, because fetishism requires a sexual focus on a nonhuman object. The degree to which a distinction should be made between abasiophilia and other similar paraphilia NOS categories, such as morphophilia and partialism, is less clear. For example, abasiophilia may be a subtype of morphophilia rather than a separate paraphilia. Although predominantly reported in males, abasiophilia also has been reported in females [by Professor Money in his 1990 paper]. Although the etiology of abasiophilia is unknown, psychodynamic interpretations suggest that for a male, the deformed limb of a woman partner represents a female penis [as noted by Dr. Fleischl, in his 1960 paper). According to analytic theory, a man may be attracted to a crippled woman because his anxiety and hostility related to ‘the shock of threatened castration at the sight of the female genital’ are reduced when the deformed limb (representing a penis) is present”.

[Just for the record, morphophilia – as defined by Dr. Milner and his colleagues refers to “an erotic focus on one or more of the body characteristics of one’s sexual partner”].

Dr. George Pranzarone’s Dictionary of Sexology also notes the reciprocal paraphilic condition is autoabasiophilia in which individuals are sexually aroused when they focus on their own condition of being lame, crippled, or unable to walk (and may involve fantasies of being disabled and/or wearing/using orthopedic assistive devices). The book chapter by Dr. Joel Milner and colleagues notes that “the vast majority of cases appear to involve males” but has also been reported in females (again quoting the case studies of Professor Money).

Abasiophilia is part of a wider attraction to disability more generally (which even has its own dedicated Wikipedia entry). There is clearly a lot of psychological crossover between abasiophilia and acrotomophilia (and between autoabasiphilia and apotemnophilia). Both abasiophiles and acrotomophiles are described in the academic literature as “devotees” who are aroused by disability. In relation to autoabasiophiles and apotemnophiles, Dr. Robert Bruno has described these individuals as having a Factitious Disability Disorder as outlined in a 1997 issue of the Journal of Sexuality and Disability (see my previous blog on amputee fetishes for a detailed explanation). However, there is a large overlap between these four paraphilias and Bruno describes such people as DPWs (“devotees, pretenders, and wannabes”). The Wikipedia entry (without much academic supporting evidence) notes:

“[Disability fetishism] starts in early childhood, usually long before puberty is reached. There is normally a trigger event in early childhood involving disabled children or adults. It is most common in those who were children in the 1940s, 50s and 60s when polio was common and there were more people using leg braces than today. Studies made in the last 10 years of people contributing to internet leg-brace devotee groups confirms the most common age of leg-brace devotees and wannabes as between 50 and 70; there are few leg-brace devotees aged less than 40…The important thing to remember is that there is no choice in the [behaviour]. The person feels ‘programmed’ to behave in this way and he has little or no ability to alter his behaviour: much though he may feel ashamed of his feelings, desires and obsessions he can do little about them…The disability may be minor like missing fingers, profound like blindness and (stereotypically) amputation, or quadroplegia. Some devotees desire people with cognitive disabilities”

The first thing person I thought of as I read this last claim (as I don’t think there is any academic research supporting such an assertion) was the late television personality Jimmy Saville who allegedly preyed on the learning disabled for sexual gratification (although this obviously isn’t an example of abasiophilia). If you want to know more about this paraphilia, you could do worse than start at the Abasophilia Information webpages that are a treasure trove of information for the would-be abasiophile.

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.

Bruno, R.L. (1997). Devotees, pretenders and wannabes: Two cases of factitious Disability Disorder. Journal of Sexuality and Disability, 15, 243-260.

Butcher, Nancy (2003). The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore. New York: Avery

Connelly, Michael (2009). The Scarecrow. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Fleischl, M. F. (1960). A man’s fantasy of a crippled girl. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 14, 741-748.

Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.

Milner, J.S. Dopke, C.A. & Crouch, J.L. (2008). Paraphilia not otherwise specified: Psychopathology and Theory In Laws, D.R. & O’Donohue, W.T. (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment (pp. 384-418). New York: Guildford Press.

Money, J. (1990). Paraphilia in females: Fixation on amputation and lameness: Two personal accounts. Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 3, 165–172.

Pranzarone, G.F. (2000). The Dictionary of Sexology. Located at: http://ebookee.org/Dictionary-of-Sexology-EN_997360.html

Twinn, F. (2007). The Miscellany of Sex: Tantalizing Travels Through Love, Lust and Libido. London: Arcturus.

Wikipedia (2012). Attraction to disability. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attraction_to_disability

What’s your crutch? The bizarre world of amputee fetishes

Some of the most bizarre paraphilias that occasionally make their way into reputable scientific journals are those that involve sexual gratification from amputation of some description. Since the late 1800s, the medical literature has described men and women who are sexually attracted to amputees, those who limp, or use crutches, braces and wheelchairs, as well as individuals who pretend to be or who actually want to become disabled. These have included references in the books of Wilhelm Stekel (Sexual Aberrations, 1930), Richard von Krafft-Ebing (Psychopathia Sexualis, 1932), Magnus Hirschfield (Sexual Anomalies and Perversions, 1944), as well as published case studies such as M.F. Fleischl’s study of “A man’s fantasy of a crippled girl” (American Journal of Psychotherapy, 1960) and Louis London’s study of “Transvestism-Desire for crippled women” (Dynamic Psychiatry, 1952).

The relationship between amputated limbs and sexual desire was little known about outside of particular academic circles, but was first brought to public attention in the letters pages of Penthouse in 1972 (see below). Although some thought these letters were a joke, it became clear that for a small minority of people, this was a rare but bona fide paraphilia.

Letter in Penthouse (May 1973): “I am 27, and have been an amputee since I lost my left leg at mid thigh when I was about eight. Probably because I have been an amputee for so long, I’ve never been shy about my lack of leg. For the last four years I have been married to a man who is fascinated by the stump of a female amputee. As a result I usually short skirts when I go out, allowing the end to show. When my husband is home, I wear short skirts so that my stump is fully exposed. I have never liked to use an artificial leg, and mostly I use a single crutch, and believe it ot not, a good ol’ peg leg…..probably many people think a peg leg is not very feminine, but it is practical for me. Sexually I feel I can compete with any two-legged girl. Because my husband is so turned on by the sight of my stump, I usually begin our lovemaking by undressing slowly at the foot of the bed. Once I have my clothes off, I lift my stump so that it points towards my husband and I begin to massage it. This excites my husband greatly, so he takes over and we go from there”

A more recent development in the world of amputee paraphilias has been the advent of the internet. This has brought global attention to people with disabilities and their admirers. Most of these sites are chat rooms and home pages for male devotees of female amputees. However, there are lots of other sites including female devotees of male amputees, particular sexual orientations (heterosexual, homosexual) and particular attractions (e.g. crutches, plaster casts, crutch, and neck braces). One specific bulletin board posting entitled “Bunion Love” requested “photos, videos, or correspondence of girls with deformed/crippled feet, or toe/toes amputated or who have severe bunions on their feet. The more severe, the better.”

Apotemnophilia: In 1977, the renowned US sexologist John Money of the John Hopkins University  coined the term “apotemnophilia” in the Journal of Sex Research. Apotemnophilia (Greek for “amputation love”) refers to being sexually excited by the fantasy or reality of being an amputee. This behaviour is often accompanied by obsessive scheming to convince a surgeon to perform a medically unnecessary amputation. This might seem to most people to be a type of masochism but reported case studies suggest that there is no erotization of pain itself – only of the healed amputated stump. To give you an inside look at the world of the apotomnophiliac, here are two real life case accounts from Professor Money’s files. Both involve people who had an erotic and obsessive desire to be an amputee.

Case Study 1: A man phoned up Professor Money’s sex research unit asking if he could have his leg amputated. He was told that this would not be possible but he continued to phone and write to the unit for the next four years. It was later discovered that he had made many attempts to self-inflict serious injury to his left leg. His obsession had been present since he was 13 years old in the form of self-amputee fantasies. On one notable occasion he hammered a stainless steel rod into his left leg and then tried to infect the open wound by smearing it on facial acne mixed with anal and nasal mucous. When his leg showed serious signs of infection he reported it to the hospital. Unfortunately his attempt failed as antibiotic treatment cleared the infection up. Looking into the childhood background, the most prominent early recollection was his left leg being severely burned by an overturned pot of boiling oatmeal at the age of two years old. This left him unable to walk for a year. However, there was little else in his family history to suggest the origins of such bizarre behaviour.

Case Study 2: A second man wrote to Professor Money for literature on the phenomenon of self-amputation. The patient reported that when he was engaged in homosexual or heterosexual intercourse he would fantasize about an amputee or being one himself. Pictures of both naked and dressed amputees were also used for masturbation purposes. Strangely, his fantasies were not always erotic and it was discovered that he could be aroused by visualizing an amputee engaging in an activity that required considerable effort on their part to overcome their physical handicap (e.g. an amputee water ski-ing). Although he considered many non-surgical ways to become an amputee, when it came down to it, he was too scared of inflicting pain to do it himself. Eventually he got a job working with handicapped people but was still attempting to find a surgeon who would amputate his leg. He continued to maintain that he would only be at peace with himself once he had been through the amputation. Looking into the patient’s background, it was discovered that he had been born with a clubbed right foot for which his father constantly criticized him. The condition was corrected during adolescence. His first amputation thoughts occurred at the age of eleven years old but these were not sexually explicit until the age of about fifteen when there was an amputee who worked with him. However, these childhood events are insufficient in explaining why it occurred.

Given the unconventional desires of the apotemnophiliac, it is perhaps unsurprising that self-mutilation occurs. To some extent, the condition resembles Munchausen’s Syndrome in that MS patients are obsessed with self-inducing symptoms repetitively for the sake of being a patient whereas the apotemnophiliac is obsessed with the symptom themselves for the sake of being an amputee.

Acrotomophilia: Acrotomophilia is a slightly different paraphilia to apotemnophilia and refers to being sexually aroused by a partner who is an amputee. They are excited by the stump or the stumps of the amputee partner and is dependent upon them for sexual arousal and attainment of orgasm. An example of this is given in the case study below (again from the files of Professor Money).

Case Study 3: This case involves a 47-year old man with an amputee fascination. His interest started at school when as an obese child he would try to do anything to avoid PE classes. It was at this stage he first started thinking that if he was an amputee he wouldn’t have to take part in these sessions. As he reached adolescence, he started to pretend to be an amputee by tying one of his legs up and making a peg to walk around on. It was during one of these “pretend” sessions that he experienced his first orgasm. As he reached late adolescence, he switched from fantasizing about being an amputee himself to wanting an amputee partner. He even made his own scrapbook turning Hollywood filmstars like Marilyn Monroe into amputees. He eventually got married and four years into his marriage he told his wife about his fantasies. She didn’t take the news well and it was never mentioned again for a further six years. However, later in the marriage, his wife would occasionally pretend to be an amputee while making love. Through an acquaintance, he developed friendships with a number of amputees and had sexual relationships with some of them. Interestingly, he claimed that his paraphilia was unlike other paraphilias because it was not always sexual and the fantasy was 24 hours a day. 

One of the interesting insights offered by the acrotomophiliac above was that he was part of an amputee network and was in regular correspondence with 55 other amputee devotees. Some of these were married to amputees while others had never even met one. Those who had ended up with amputee partners sometimes changed their focus and became “wannabe” amputees. With regards to the amputee fixation itself, around a quarter of the network were sharply focused on the stump itself and are very exact about what it should feel and look like (some being attracted to the scars – the more the better). Around a quarter of the network were really turned on by the asymmetry that amputation brings. For these people, bilateral amputees (for example, people with both legs amputated) were a turn-off.

In 1983, the first survey of male acrotomophiles was published in the journal Sexuality and Disability. The 195 acrotomophiles in the study were all customers of AMPIX (a company providing stories about and pictures of amputees) and were described as white, college educated, professional males. The results revealed that 75% had been aware of their interest in amputees by the age of fifteen. It was also reported that 55% of respondents had dated amputees, 40% had had sex with an amputee, and only 5% had married an amputee. 53% of the respondents had pretended to be an amputee (11% having done so publicly) and 71% had fantasized about being an amputee.

Another study completed in 1996 surveyed 50 acrotomophiles. The participants were again white college educated, professional males. Of these, 96% had been aware of their interest in amputees by their teens. In this sample, 41% had been married to or lived with an amputee, more than 43% had pretended to be amputees and 22% desired to become amputees. Using psychometric tests, the acrotomophiles were found on average to have high scores on self-esteem, but low scores on social interest, emotional stability and personal relations. Such tendencies have become a concern of people with disabilities since acrotomophiles demonstrate problematic behaviors. These include collecting names, addresses and phone numbers of disabled persons, obsessive and intrusive phone calls, letters and e-mail to persons with disabilities, attending and sometimes organizing disability-related events, lurking in public places to watch, take covert pictures of, talking to and touching disabled persons, and even engaging in predatory stalking.

Devotees, Pretenders and Wannabes: Dr. Robert Bruno, Director of the Post-Polio Institute (New Jersey) described two cases in an effort to understand the psychology of “devotees, pretenders and wannabes” (DPWs). So what exactly are DPWs? Put very simply:

• Devotees are non-disabled people who are sexually attracted to people with disabilities, typically those with mobility impairments and especially amputees.
• Pretenders are non-disabled people who act as if they have a disability by using assistive devices (for example braces, wheelchairs, and crutches). This may be done in private or in public so that they can ‘feel’ disabled or are perceived by others as having a disability.
• Wannabes actually want to become disabled, sometimes going to extraordinary lengths to have a limb amputated.

Dr. Bruno has also reported some of his case studies in the scientific literature:

Case Study 4: A 48-year old white female had been interested in men who had mobility impairments since she was a teenager. The first evidence of her interest was in high school when she dated a boy who had a severe limp. Although they kissed, she reports not being very sexually aroused by him and was interested, not in having intercourse, but in being with him and potentially seeing his affected leg. She then had a one-off date with an “obese and mildly retarded” wheelchair-bound man who she met through a personal ad. After their first passionate kiss she went to the bathroom and masturbated to orgasm by imagining herself having sex with the man. She did not want to have sex with him, as just the thought of him in his wheelchair was enough to give her an orgasm. She continued to search, obsessively at times, for disabled men. However, things changed when on a work trip she noticed a wheelchair behind the front desk of the hotel and first had the idea that she could pretend to be disabled. She started to do this regularly and after each trip out in a wheelchair she would return to her room and masturbate to orgasm while sitting in the wheelchair. The fantasies that aroused her were not even sexual. She would imagine her legs being paralyzed or picture herself being in a wheelchair. Alternatively she would imagine a paralyzed man walking on crutches, or his braces. This was enough to bring her to orgasm. Her ultimate fantasy was to meet a disabled man while she was pretending to be disabled and have sex. However, she denied strongly that she herself wanted to have a disability.

Looking into her childhood, she described herself as a lonely child whose parents ignored her. However, she recounted an incident when a local child, who had had polio and walked with crutches and leg braces, walked past their home on the way to school. Her parents appeared to show more concern for the boy than for her. She also remembered how her teacher would give more attention to the disabled children. After these experiences she would play in the family garage using croquet mallets as crutches and tieing sticks to her legs for braces. She also remembered finding her old baby carriage and pretending it was her wheelchair. Basically, she wanted to be a disabled child so she would be loved.

A variety of explanations have been offered for DPW’s attractions, desires and behaviours. The most appealing explanation involves the pairing in childhood of a disability-related stimulus with sexual arousal. For example, one plaster-cast devotee reported by Dr. Bruno had his first sexual experience with a girl who was wearing a leg cast. However, only 19% of respondents to the AMPIX survey related their interest in amputees to any kind of direct contact with a disabled person, and the overwhelming majority of devotees have reported their interest in disabled persons began long before puberty.

Attraction to disabled persons has also been related to homosexuality, sadism and bondage. However, recent surveys find no increased prevalence of homosexuality, sadism or interest in bondage among acrotomophiles. Several case studies have indicated that there may be a higher incidence of transvestites and transsexuals among DPW’s. However, the notion that an apotemnophile is a “disabled person trapped in a nondisabled body” is difficult to justify, as there is no ‘naturally-occurring’ state of disability that would correspond to the the two naturally-occurring genders. Others have suggested that DPW’s desires develop from a combination of a strict anti-sexual attitude in the child’s household, deprivation of maternal love and parental rejection in early childhood that creates a fear for survival and a self-generated fantasy for security.

Some case reports (like the one above) appear to suggest that deprivation of parental love, coupled with seeing parents’ positive emotional response to a disabled child, set the stage for attraction to the disabled. However, there may be other psychological factors at work as we shall see in the final case outlined below from the case notes of Dr. Bruno.

Case Study 5: A 45 year old white female with a history of childhood polio continually complained of arm and leg weakness, daily fatigue, disturbed sleep, imbalance and falling. Through her twenties and thirties she had many operations (on her hips and legs) and often became depressed. She had twice attempted suicide. In her early forties, she was given knee and ankle braces to treat her “instability.” Because of discomfort, she rarely wore these and began using crutches. The patient’s husband stated that she was again able to walk at home and in the hospital when she was in a psychotic state but not at any other time. He recalled that his wife had always wanted to have a “little disability” that would not limit her, like wearing braces on both legs, but only up to her calves. She thought that her mother and people in general would have treated her more kindly if she had been a disabled child. 

Her childhood desire to have a ‘little disability’ was something she thought would have allowed her to be “treated more kindly,” and her subsequent development of a Factitious Disorder, suggest that those with factitious physical disabilities can be combined with DPWs to create a diagnostic grouping that Dr. Bruno calls Factitious Disability Disorders. These are conditions in which disability – real or pretended – provide an opportunity to be loved and attended to where no such opportunity has otherwise existed. As noted earlier, Professor Money observed that apotemnophilia may share something in common with Munchausen’s Syndrome. However, Professor Money distinguishes between the Munchausen’s patient, who is obsessed with self-inducing symptoms repetitively for the sake of being a patient, and the apotemnophile who is supposedly satisfied with a single amputation.

The commonality between both conditions is they engage in the behaviour “for the sake of being a patient” (to receive the care and attention that would otherwise not be obtainable). Apotemnophiles need only one – albeit very extreme – medical intervention that leaves them with a lasting and obvious stigma of disability that they believe will permanently satisfy their need for love and attention. If the common psychological foundation of these conditions is that disability will satisfy unmet needs for love and attention, then there are only two factors that differentiate between DPWs and those with a factitious physical disability – the awareness of a desire to appear or actually become disabled and physically appearing to be disabled.

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

Further reading

Berger, B.D., Lehrmann, J.A., Larson, G., Alverno, L. & Tsao, C.I. (2005). Nonpsychotic, nonparaphilic self-amputation and the internet. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 46, 380-383.

Brang, D., McGeoch, P. & Ramachandran V.S. (2008). Apotemnophilia: A neurological disorder. Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology 19, 1305-1306.

Bruno, R.L. (1997). Devotees, pretenders and wannabes: Two cases of factitious Disability Disorder. Journal of Sexuality and Disability, 15, 243-260.

First, M.B. (2005). Desire for amputation of a limb: Paraphilia, psychosis, or a new type of identity disorder. Psychological Medicine, 35, 919–928.

Dixon, D. (1983). An erotic attraction to amputees. Sexuality and Disability, 6, 3-19.

Everaerd, W.  (1983). A case of apotemnophilia: A handicap as sexual preference.  American Journal of Psychotherapy, 37, 285-293.

Griffiths, M.D. (2001). Stumped! Amputee fetishes. Bizarre, 44, 70-74.

Money, J. (1990). Paraphilia in females: Fixation on amputation and lameness. Journal of Psychological Human Sexuality, 3, 165-172.

Money, J., Jobaris, R. & Furth, G. (1977). Apotemnophilia: Two cases of self-demand amputation as a paraphilia.  Journal of Sex Research, 13, 115-125.

Money, J. & Simcoe, K.W. (1986). Acrotomophilia, sex and disability: New concepts and case report.  Sexuality and Disability, 7, 43-50.

Storrs, B. (1997). Devotees of disability, New Mobility, 6, 50-53.

Storrs, B. (1997). Amputees, Inc.: Amputees pitching products and themselves to devotees of disability. New Mobility, 7, 26-31.