Stairing at the rude boys: A brief look at climacophilia

In a number of my previous blogs, I have mentioned sexual paraphilias that appear to have been derived from the opposite phobic behaviours. Some examples include defecaloesiophilia (sexual arousal from painful bowel movements), lockiophilia (sexual arousal from childbirth), categelophilia (sexual arousal from being ridiculed), and rupophilia (sexual arousal from dirt). Another one that I could add to this list is climacophilia (sexual arousal from falling down stairs). This particular paraphilia got a lot of media publicity a few years ago when Dr. Jesse Baring was plugging his 2013 book Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us. (which I will return to below; I ought to confess that I love reading Baring’s populist articles and Professor Paul Bloom [of Yale University] went as far as to describe him as the “Hunter S. Thompson of science writing.”). Climacophilia appears to be the opposite of climacophobia. The Wikipedia entry notes that:

“Climacophobia is the fear of climbing, especially using stairs. It is a type of specific phobia. Climacophobia is distinct from bathmophobia the fear of stairs themselves. Climacophobia is usually traced back to a negative experience, like falling down the stairs or having difficult time to climb stairs. The fear is also triggered by others, like witnessing somebody falling down stairs (either in real visualization or through media) or the other people he/she knows is suffering from climacophobia. Sufferers of climacophobia, if left untreated, end up limiting their activities and avoiding occupations that require the use of stairs or ladders. Sufferers tend to rely on elevators or disability-access ramps rather than stairs…Climacophobes tend to suffer from dizziness resembling vertigo when looking down stairs…Climacophobia can be treated using cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT], either independently or in tandem with other techniques. CBT can help sufferers stop negative thoughts about climbing while changing behaviors. Other treatment options include relaxation techniques, talk therapy, and medication for people who suffer severely from climacophobia”.

In Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, climacophilia makes a seven-word entry between ‘clinical vampirism’ (arousal by drinking human or animal blood) and ‘coitobalnism’ (having sex in the bath), and is simply defined as deriving pleasure from falling down stairs. There was no mention of it all in Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Various websites provide definitions including the Pro Boner website (“Climacophilia is an intriguing paraphilia characterised by sexual arousal to falling down the stairs. Climacophiles have their best orgasms when they’re falling down the stairs”) and the Buzz IO website (“Climacophilia is being sexually stimulated by seeing someone fall down a flight of stairs”). When reviewing Baring’s book, the New York Times defined it as “the erotic compulsion to tumble down stairs”. Wikipedia also has a short entry and simply states:

“Climacophilia is a rare sexual paraphilia, or fetish in which the subject experiences erotic gratification when falling down the stairs. There hasn’t been a wide body of research conducted on people affected with this particular sexual preference and/or fetish”.

All of these definitions and snippets imply slightly different things relating to the same alleged behaviour. While all involve some kind of sexual arousal from falling down stairs, the New York Times says the behaviour is an “erotic compulsion” whereas most others describe the behaviour as arousing, stimulating, and pleasurable (without being compulsive). One definition involves ‘orgasm’ being involved while the rest do not. The Wikipedia entry seems to imply that the paraphilia exists (it says “rare” rather than non-existent). The entry also says there “hasn’t been a wide body of research” suggesting there is some (perhaps a narrow body of research) – but that clearly isn’t the case. There’s none.

The journalist David DiSalvo interviewed Dr. Baring for Forbes magazine in relation to his book Perv, which covers 46 different paraphilias (all of which are listed in an article in the Huffington Post) – with paraphilias being defined by Baring as being “primary attraction to a target or activity outside of the statistical norm”. Although I agree that paraphilias tend to be non-normative, I’m not whether I’d ever use the phrase “outside of the statistical norm” as there are some paraphilic behaviours that the majority of sexually active individuals are likely to have engaged in at least peripherally (such as bondage and other milder forms of sadomasochistic behaviour). In relation to the paraphilias outlined in his book, baring told DiSalvo that:

“These included both exceptionally rare paraphilias (such as ‘climacophilia’ in which a person can only get off while tumbling down a flight of stairs) and the more run-of-the-mill ones that are detailed in the DSM-V, such as voyeurism, sadism, and frotteurism (which is gratification by touching people in crowded public places, such as subways). But that’s just a small sampling. The most authoritative list, cobbled together by an Indian psychiatrist named Anil Aggrawal, includes a total of 547 distinct paraphilias”.

If you type in Baring’s name and his book into Google, many articles appear which mention ‘climacophilia’. For instance, in an interview with Vice magazine, the journalist (Nadja Sayej) began her article by saying:

“You may have recently seen the soft-spoken Jesse Baring on Conan recalling the strangest of sexual fetishes. Be it arousal from falling down the stairs (Climacophilia) or feeling steamy from rolling around in stones and gravel (Lithophilia), nothing surprises the Western New York author and psychologist”.

Baring was asked by Sayej what the weirdest fetish he had come across but there was no mention of climacophilia (probably because no-one has ever come across it):

“According to a recent forensic resource by the psychiatrist Anil Aggrawal, there are 547 documented paraphilias. Some of them – actually, most of them – are quite carnival-like. But it’s important to remember that these more exotic manifestations of sexuality might be represented by just one lone figure in the universe: a single, sad, lascivious soul who can only, just to give two random examples, have an orgasm while fondling a mouse (“musophilia”) or while rolling around in ferns (“pteridomania”). It’s virtually impossible for me to pick the weirdest, since so many of them would fit the bill for truly bizarre. I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes in this literature, from a sex research pioneer named Wilhelm Stekel – who, incidentally, coined the word ‘paraphilia‘ in the 1920s. “Variatio delectat! How innumerable are the variations which Eros creates in order to make the monotonous simplicity of the natural sex organ interesting to the sexologist”.

I have spent hours online trying to track down any evidence that climacophilia exists and I have drawn a complete blank. Yes, there are lots of mentions of it (particularly in the articles on Baring’s book) but no dedicated articles (except a satirical one that I came across on the Dumb Buzz Feed website which you can read here). There are no online forums where like-minded climacophiles congregate and there are no climacophiles that have written so much as a one-sentence confession of being sexually aroused either by falling down stairs or watching others fall down stairs. In an academic review of Baring’s book, in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Dr. David Ribner made a specific reference about Baring’s inclusion of climacophilia and said it was “incredulous…is there really someone out there who can only achieve orgasm by falling down a flight of stairs?”

Based on my own research I think I can answer that question in two letters. No.

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

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Baring, J. (2013). Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us. New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Bergner, D. (2013). Acquired tastes. ‘Perv’, by Jesse Baring. New York Times, October 4. Located at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/books/review/perv-by-jesse-bering.html

DiSalvo, D. (2013). Getting in touch with your inner sexual deviant. Forbes, October 24. Located at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/10/24/getting-in-touch-with-your-inner-sexual-deviant/#6f0f5548568e

Dumb Buzz Feed (2015). 7 problems only people with climacophilia will understand. May 3. Located at: https://dumbuzzfeed.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/7-problems-only-people-with-climacophilia-will-understand/

Huffington Post (2013). 46 sexual fetishes you’ve never heard of. October 23. Located at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/sexual-fetish_n_4144418.html

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

Ribner, D.S. (2013). A review of ‘Perv: The sexual deviant in all of us’, by Jesse Baring. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 30, 297-300.

From the university of perversity: An A to Z of non-researched sexual paraphilias (Part 4)

Today’s blog is the fourth part in my review of little researched (and in most cases non-researched) sexual paraphilias and strange sexual behaviours. (You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here). I’ve tried to locate information on all of these alleged sexual behaviours listed below and in some cases have found nothing more than a definition (some of which were in Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices and/or Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices).

• Astraphilia: This behaviour refers to the sexual attraction toward thunder and lightening, although is sometimes defined as sexual attraction to lightening only. (In a previous blog, I noted that brontophilia is often defined as being sexually attracted to thunder and lightening).
• Bastinado: This behaviour (also known as Falanga) is a form of foot beating where the soles of a person’s bare feet are beaten continually with such implements as leather/rubber straps, bats, canes, rods, electric cords, truncheons, etc. According to Michael Samadhi’s Joy of Kink website, “the documented history of bastinado goes back more than 1000 years, and it’s been employed by repressive regimes like the Nazi’s and the Khmer Rouge”.
• Climacophilia: This behaviour refers to individuals that get sexually aroused from falling down the stairs. There hasn’t been a wide body of research conducted on people affected with this particular sexual preference and/or fetish. This particular paraphilia got lots of press coverage when the psychologist Dr. Jesse Bering published his 2014 book Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us that mentioned 46 different paraphilias, many of which were described as “outside of the statistical norm”.
• Defecaloesiophilia: This behaviour refers to individuals that are sexual aroused by painful bowel movements (the word derived from its phobia opposite ‘defecaloesiophobia’). I’ve never found anyone online admitting to having such a paraphilia although there certainly appears to be those with haemorrhoid fetishes as I outlined in one of my previous blogs.
• Erythrophilia: This behaviour (sometimes referred to as erytophilia and ereuthophilia) refers to being sexually aroused by the colour red (but some definitions say it is also to red lights and even blushing (i.e., red faced individuals). Although I’ve come across a few individuals online that admit to having a blushing fetish I’ve yet to find anyone admitted to being sexually aroused specifically by the colour red.
• Francophilia: This behaviour refers to those who derive sexual arousal towards France or French culture. Anecdotally I know of women who claim to be sexually aroused to the French accent and I mentioned a few examples in my blog on xenophilia (sexual arousal from foreigners) but whether this paraphilia genuinely exists is debateable.
• Gomphipothic: According to the Right Diagnosis website, gomphipothic refers to being sexually aroused by the sight of teeth. (This appears to be another name for odontophilia that I covered in a previous blog).
• Hephephilia: This behaviour refers to individuals who have a compulsion to steal specific items related to their fetish such as retifists (shoe fetishists) who steal items of footwear (for example) from shoe shops or innocent victims at the beach. An article on the Toeslayer website recalls an infamous case from 1979 in Japan involving the “shoe thief of Tokyo”. Over three-and-a-half years (before he was finally caught), he accosted women, stole their shoes, and then ran off. When arrested, the police found 127 pairs of women’s shoes at his home.
• Ichthyophilia: This behaviour refers to those who derive sexual arousal from fish. I have never seen any case study in the academic literature although in previous blogs I did outline cases of humans having sex with other water creatures (cephalopods like octopus and squid) and there are certainly zoophilic films where fish have been used as a masturbatory aid. (There are of course the infamous stories about the band Led Zeppelin, groupies, and fish tales that you can Google for yourselves – just type in ‘Led Zeppelin’ and ‘red snapper’ or ‘mud shark’).
• Japanophilia: This behaviour refers to those who derive adoexual arousal towards Japan or Japanese culture. Some of my readers have accused me of having Japanophilia given the number of blogs I have written about Japanese sexuality and fetishes (but I can assure you I haven’t).
• Kinbaku-bi: This behaviour refers to a Japanese type of bondage and has the literal meaning of ‘tight binding’. According to the Wikipedia entry on Japanese bondage, Kinbaku-bi “involves tying up the bottom [the receiver] using simple yet visually intricate patterns, usually with several pieces of thin rope…In Japanese, this natural-fibre rope is known as ‘asanawa’; the Japanese vocabulary does not make a distinction between hemp and jute. The allusion is to the use of hemp rope for restraining prisoners, as a symbol of power, in the same way that stocks or manacles are used in a Western BDSM context. The word ‘shibari’ came into common use in the West at some point in the 1990s to describe the bondage art Kinbaku”.
• Lockiophilia: This behaviour refers to sexual arousal derived from childbirth (and is named after its opposite phobia – lockiophobia). In a previous blog I did look at childbirth fetishism which you can read here.
• Metrophilia: This behaviour refers to sexual arousal derived from poetry. I don’t doubt that some poetry (like music) can contribute to sexual arousal (and that there is fetish-based and other erotic poetry) but I know of no actual case (anecdotal or otherwise). Prove me wrong and I will happily write about it.
• Normophilia: This was a term coined by the sexologist Professor John Money and refers those only sexually aroused by acts considered normal by their religion or society (and excellently critiqued by Dr. Lisa Downing in a 2010 issue of Psychology and Sexuality).
• Ochlophilia: This behaviour refers to sexual arousal derived from crowds or mobs. I’m not aware this exists as a standalone fetish but frotteurs (those who derive sexual arousal from rubbing up against people) love crowded places as a way of engaging in their preferred sexual behaviour).
• Phalloorchoalgolagnia: According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, this behaviour refers to sexual arousal by the experiencing of painful stimuli being administered to the male genitals (of which a sub-type would include tamakeri that I examined in a previous blog). It is related to ‘cock and ball torture which the Wikipedia entry (based on Darren Langdridge and Meg Barker’s 2008 book Safe, Sane, and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasocism) notes “may involve directly painful activities, such as wax play, genital spanking, squeezing, ball-busting, genital flogging, urethral play, tickle torture, erotic electrostimulation, or even kicking. The recipient of such activities may receive direct physical pleasure via masochism, or emotional pleasure through knowledge that the play is pleasing to a sadistic dominant. The practice carries significant health risks”.
• Queefing fetishism: A little bit of a cheat here as I’ve covered queefing fetishes (sexual arousal from vaginal flatulence) in some detail in a previous blog but there are so few potentially paraphilic behaviours beginning with the letter ‘Q’. (If you feel I’m short-changing you, read my previous article here).
• Rhytiphilia: This is where individuals derive sexual arousal from facial wrinkles. This would appear to be related to gerontophilia (sexual arousal to people who are much older than the individuals themselves). I doubted whether this fetish actually exists but I have came across individuals that claim to have such fetishes (such as here and here).
• Stygiophilia: According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal, stygiophilia refers to sexual pleasure from the thought of going to hell. It’s also the name of a novel on the topic by Nathan Tyree.
• Teleiophilia: This neologism was coined by the sexologist Dr. Ray Blanchard and refers to sexual interest in adults. As the Wikipedia entry on Blanchard notes: “Unlike the terms referring to sexual interest in other age groups, such as paedophilia (sexual interest in prepubescent children), teleiophilia is not considered a paraphilia. The term was formalized in order to forestall neologisms, such as ‘adultophilia’ or ‘normophilia’ that were occasionally used, but had no precise definition. The term is used primarily by professional sexologists in the scientific literature”.
• Urethral fetishism: In previous blogs I have examined urethral sex play in its many forms and with its own lexicon (so if you want to read about it in more detail, read more here).
• Venatophilia: In an online article about cartoon quicksand fetishes, there was mention of a fetish group called ‘Giant Video Game Girls’ and they appear to have coined the term ‘venatophilia’ from the Latin venatus, meaning ‘game’ and describes sexual attraction to or fascination with video game characters. Personally I find this strange as most paraphilias derive from Greek (rather than Latin) names. This paraphilia (if it exists) is arguably a sub-type of toonophilia (sexual attraction to cartoon characters) that I examined in a previous blog.
• Wolf-play: In previous blogs I have examined the Furry Fandom (individuals that dress up as animals that engage in both sexual and non-sexual interaction) and various fetish pet play behaviours such as pony play. Wolf-play is just another variant of pet-play.
• Xyrophilia: This behaviour refers to those individuals who derive sexual arousal from razors (and again has a name derived from its opposite condition – xyrophobia). However, there are online forums for razor fetishists and there may be crossover with those that have blood fetishes (which I’ve looked at in various previous blogs).
• “Yaoi fetishism: According to an online article about kinks and fetishes on the Your Tango website, “Yaoi is a type of anime, manga, or fan fiction that originated in Japan which centers on male-on-male sexuality”. The article notes the term ‘Yaoi’ comes from the Japanese phrase “Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi” (and translates to “no climax, no meaning, no point”). An article on the Kinkly website claims that “Yaoi is typically created by women and aimed at women although it has some male fans. It should not be confused with ‘Bara’ which is aimed at a gay male audience”.
• Zentai fetishism: Again, according to the online article on the Your Tango website, zentai fetishism involves individuals that “like to wear, be covered in, bound by and otherwise enjoy lycra full-body suits”.  An article in Fortune magazine notes that the ‘zentai’ is derived from the Japanese words zenshin taitsu that translates as “full body tights”. The same article claims that zentai suits tend to be more fetishistic whereas “morphsuits” are “for more mainstream cosplay fun and are likely to show up at football games, ComicCon, or frat parties”.

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.

Bering, J. (2014). Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us. London: Doubleday.

Downing, L. (2010). John Money’s ‘Normophilia’: diagnosing sexual normality in late-twentieth-century Anglo-American sexology. Psychology and Sexuality, 1(3), 275-287.

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

Langdridge, D. & Barker, M. (2008). Safe, Sane, and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasocism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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

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.

Serrano, R.H. (2004). Parafilias. Revista Venezolana de Urologia, 50, 64-69.

Shaffer, L. & Penn, J. (2006). A comprehensive paraphilia classification system. In E.W. Hickey (Ed.), Sex crimes and paraphilia. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Write World (2013). Philias. Located at: http://writeworld.tumblr.com/philiaquirks