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

Blown away: A brief look at ‘wind fetishism’

I have to start by saying that this article is not about flatulence fetishes (which I’ve covered in a number of previous blogs, here, here and here) but about individuals who are sexually aroused by the wind. I decided to write this article when I came across a relatively detailed first-person account online. While I cannot guarantee the veracity of the account, the level of specific detail leads me to the conclusion that the account is genuine. Here I include verbatim text followed by my commentary.

• Case 1, Extract 1: “I’ve never had an outlet where I can speak openly about this aspect of my sexuality before. Sorry if I get too excited. My fetish is unusual and, from what I can tell, exceptionally uncommon. I haven’t even found a proper term for it in the 4 years I’ve been prowling Google for related content. I have a wind fetish. Specifically, I love powerful winds – the stronger, the better, and watching people and objects get blown around. My favorite things to watch are people with long hair and loose clothing, as well as trees. Trees are great. The sound is also a massive component, and is often enough to get me aroused on its own. I do love the idea of being out in strong winds, but the only time it’s windy where I live is when it’s cold or raining. That ruins the fun”.

I agree that the fetish is uncommon because I’ve seen so few references to it either online or in academic texts. In his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, Dr. Anil Aggrawal does list ‘wind fetish’ in his long list of sexual parahilias and defines it as “sexual attraction to being blown by the wind”. In the case described here, the individual also gets sexually aroused from watching other individuals and objects being blow around (which goes beyond the definition defined by Dr. Aggrawal). Interestingly, the sexual attraction has a number of sub-components such as the reference to long hair and loose clothing being a particular turn on. The other aspects I found interesting were the references to trees and the sound the wind makes. Both of these aspects have associations with other paraphilias that I have written about, namely dendrophilia (sexual arousal from trees) and acousticophilia (sexual arousal from auditory stimuli usually from a very specific sound). The fact that the sound of the wind itself is sexually arousing suggests this is more likely to be acousticophilia than wind fetishism. In addition, the source of the sexual arousal (i.e., the wind) has to be contextualized for it to be sexually arousing. In the case described here, wind in the cold and/or the rain dampens the sexual desire (no pun intended). She then goes on to say:

• Case 1, Extract 2: “I’ve had this fetish for as long as I can remember, and I can’t think of what triggered it. When I was very young, I remember having a dream that involved a tornado; that was the earliest thing. My favorite game growing up was always bringing out our big fan and playing with my Barbie dolls in front of it, and I brought wind into a lot of other imaginative games I played. In elementary school I found one book on meteorology in the school library, and whenever we had library time I would hide in one of the lesser-visited aisles and read over the Beaufort Scale over and over. I remember feeling deeply ashamed about it, but I didn’t know why. I would always have trouble sleeping when it was windy outside. I used to think that my feelings about wind stemmed from a phobia, but I don’t think that was it. Never went through the same pattern with spiders. Anyway, I don’t remember the point when I figured out it was arousal, but the next thing I knew I was getting off to storm chaser videos”.

Here, the individual admits she has no idea about the roots of her fetish but does note that wind featured heavily in both her early leisure and educational experiences. The shame element also suggests that her fascination with wind (such as repeatedly reading the Beaufort Scale) was sexual but she didn’t realise it at the time. She then goes on to say:

• Case 1, Extract 3: “Sex has never done the same things for me. I’ve tried watching regular porn, but it just made me feel numb. I haven’t had too much experience with real sexual acts, but the amount that I’ve done hasn’t gotten me turned on. In that way, I suppose I’m thankful for my fetish. It gives me an avenue into sexual pleasure that my sex-aversion would have denied me otherwise. At the same time though it makes me feel incredibly alienated, especially given its rarity. I managed to find one online community for it, and although it’s tiny (an Experience Project page that gets maybe one post per month), at least I know I’m not completely alone. But it’s hard to talk about sex with other people when your entire sexual identity is wrapped up in something that’s socially unacceptable to discuss openly”.

Here, the account is suggestive of a true fetish (in that no sexual desire is experienced unless the source of the fetish is present). It also indicates that other individuals have the fetish in that she was able to find others online who had the same fetish and that this makes her feel better because she is “not completely alone”. Another individual replies to her post and comments:

• Case 2, Extract 4: “What you said about fetishes encompassing more than just arousal is absolutely true for me. Mine comes bundled with a host of other emotions – fear, awe, anticipation, excitement, hunger, so on. There’s nothing else in my life quite like it. I am fixated on the wind on multiple levels, to the point where I have trouble separating it from my core identity. I wish I was brave enough to create content like you do, but I’m still too embarrassed and afraid of people finding out. I can’t even bring myself to store related files on my computer in fear of people discovering them…I’ve actually been trying to get myself into macrophilia (I’ve always had an emotional fascination, and having a fetish that people actually produce content of would be nice), and so far results have been only mildly successful. I don’t think it’s ever going to stack up to my love of wind”.

This individual (gender unknown) also finds wind fetishism shameful and is embarrassed by it. The fact that this individual describes it as core to their identity and is fixated at a number of levels underlines that this is something that is far from trivial. The growing interest in macrophilia (sexual arousal from giants – and which I covered in previous blogs here and here) – unlike the interest in wind – is something that the person is trying to develop (which perhaps implicitly means that the wind fetish has been around as long as the individual can remember). A different individual (presumably male but could be female) noted:

• Case 3, Extract 5: “I’ve been doing a great deal of reflecting on my fetish, and have come to the conclusion that the excitement comes from imagining what out-of-control wind feels like on girls, particularly in regards to their clothing. Weird thing is, this is clearly sexual to me, and yet the idea of a girl lost in a blizzard seems more romantic (I like to imagine rushing out to give her a warm hug and bring her to safety). I think perhaps the whole clothing thing is related somehow – for example, something I find really exciting is a girl wearing a warm hoodie/sweater and wearing a small skirt completely out of control due to wind. Contrast, perhaps? Maybe I’m overanalysing again”.

Here, the wind is perhaps associated with a type of clothes fetishism and other weather (i.e., a blizzard) as well as ‘damsel in distress fetishism’ (which I looked at in a previous blog and is why I suspect this person to be male as most individuals with this fetish are male). The cross-pollination and/or co-existence of multiple fetishes and paraphilias is well-known in the academic literature. Another person wrote:

• Case 4, Extract 6: “Ever since I was younger, I’ve always loved watching and hearing trees and grass get blown all around in the wind. All the sexual fantasies and wet dreams I’ve had always had something to do with the wind blowing trees or something. It’s kind of embarrassing, since I always get flustered when it’s really windy out and someone comments on the weather”.

This short account shares similarities with the first case in that the aural element of the fetish is also an important part of the fetish (although the visual elements are equally stressed). Like Case 2, the accompanying embarrassment about having the fetish is also noted. In an online discussion (on Reddit) about the strangest fetishes that people had come across, one discussant claimed that there was a woman on the discussion group who was “sexually aroused by wind and masturbated to videos of tornadoes” although I was unable to locate her.

I did go looking online for further evidence of wind fetishes and managed to locate a few first-person confessions:

• Case 5, Extract 7: “I am talking about air currents on the surface of our planet. A windy day can, if I let it, get very inside my head, and can drive me crazy. I have seen some very well worded descriptions of it on this and other forum websites”.
• Case 6, Extract 8: “I have a fetish for strong winds. Watching people struggle against the wind is just about the sexiest thing every to me, although people need not be involved. (In fact, the presence of a human is more of an imagination aid because it helps me imagine how it would feel to be out there myself; I don’t feel any attraction to the person being blown) Just trees getting blown around turns me on. Although visuals are important, the audio is the biggest thing for me. The sound drives me nuts. I’ve found that this is a rather inconvenient fetish to have, for two reasons. The first is that almost no one else has this so very little specialized content is actually produced. More than half of the “porn” I watch ends up being storm chaser videos. The second reason is that I have no control about when it is or isn’t windy outside. It’s annoying when I desperately want a windy day and all I get is a little teasing breeze, but also equally frustrating when a windy day comes along when I have work to be doing and I can’t focus on anything…I don’t seem to have much of a sexuality beyond this. I’ve never been able to masturbate to regular porn, and the only time I’ve orgasmed was during Hurricane Sandy. This might be partially due to other sexual issues I have (I probably have vaginismus), but for now wind stuff is the only thing I can enjoy. I may have a minor thing for macro/micro too, but not enough to get off on”.
• Case 7, Extract 9: “We’re so small of a group of people that share such a rare fetish, that there isn’t even a scientific term for it. Even the most obscure psychological diseases have a name given to them. It’s kinda depressing for me almost…All in all, finding out about this makes me feel a bit isolated”.
• Case 8, Extract 10: “Now I do agree with you that we NEED a place where we can safely have fun with our fetish. It would be really fun to be able to interact with people who have the same ‘desire’ we do…Well, compare the amount of people we have in this group compared to how many people known fetishes are associated with. We’re an extremely small group compared to them. Also just because you get delighted looks from wearing certain clothes in the wind, doesn’t really mean that they have a fetish of it like we do…Maybe this fetish is ‘rare’ because ours is not socially highlighted like others…I think the reason for my fetish is an extremely rare set of conditions when I was about 2 to 3 years old. I remember seeing wind push people in at least two episodes of a show I used to watch, and there was this movie where there was this wind that was sentient and blew stronger every day or something, I think it was the ‘Neverending Story’ or something. I don’t know. However, remembering back right know the physics were all wrong and would probably cause goose bumps to me now at how horribly executed I remember them as. Of Course back then they were perfect”.

All of these snippets provide useful information concerning wind fetishes. The cases appear to be a mixture of both males and females, and one female (Case 6) suspects that her wind fetish is in part determined by the fact that penile-vaginal sex is painful due to a sexual dysfunction and that the fetish she has doesn’t need sexual intercourse to be sexually fulfilled. The rarity of the fetish is again spoken about (Cases 7 and 8), as well as the co-existence of macrophilia (along with microphilia too) is also noted (Case 6). Their visual source of ‘porn’ comprise clips of wind and tornados in TV shows and news footage, and some (Case 8) claim that others don’t really have the fetish if it’s liking clothes that are blown about in the wind. Based on my own research into the topic, I think that wind fetishism exists but as most of the cases I found highlight, it looks to be extremely rare. I would also argue that even among these small number of vase studies, there appear to be different sub-types of wind fetishism and that most individuals’ experiences of wind fetishism began back in childhood. Unlike most fetishes and paraphilias, wind fetishism does not appear to be male-based as some of the cases unearthed are clearly female. As with many fetishes I have looked at, the chances of any academic research into the topic are going to be limited at best.

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.

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

Mai, F.M.M. (1968). A new psychosexual syndrome – “Ecouteurism” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 2, 261-263.

One giant step for man: Another look at macrophilia

Earlier this week, an article by Felicity Monk was published on the Broadly website about macrophilia (individuals derive sexual arousal from a fascination with giants and/or a sexual fantasy involving giants) and also known as giant (or giantess) fetishism. Broadly is an offshoot of Vice.com and is a website is a website “devoted to representing the multiplicity of women’s experiences”. I have been interviewed by both Broadly and Vice over the last few years on a number of topics including gambling, dacryphilia, and Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. I was interviewed for the Broadly article mainly because I’m one of the few academics ever to have written an article on the topic. I was quoted as saying in the Broadly article that “no-one has ever published even so much as an interview with a macrophile in an academic journal”.

In the Broadly article, Monk managed to interview a couple of macrophiles including Katelyn, a bisexual female in her thirties (five foot two inches tall) who has a number of co-occurring fetishes including macrophilia (in which she is sexually aroused by the thought of being a giant). She also has her own giantess website (which can be accessed here, but please be warned that the site features sexually explicit content) which she set up so that macrophiles could come and “worship” her. For Katelin, her macrophilic tendencies started from watching Tom and Jerry cartoons and the disparate size of the characters. As Katelyn said:

“The first time I had a good tingly feeling was when I was watching Tom have so much fun trying to catch Jerry. I always liked how Jerry got away so that the game would continue. I so badly wanted to be that cat. Little did I know it was the start of my sexuality. [By the time I got to high school I] was fantasising about literally crushing [my] high school crushes, swallowing [my] boyfriends and girlfriends alive, and putting [my] entire foot through the school. Most of the time I felt out of place and very alone sexually. [My preferred size of being a giant] changes depending on what mood [I’m] in. Some days I’m in the mood to play with the entire earth/galaxy, and other times I’m in the mood to attack a lone city as a 100ft woman. I rarely go below 100 feet. Most commonly, however, I’m fantasizing about being mega – 3000-plus feet tall”.

Katelyn has now monetized her fetish by turning her website into a commercial venture. As the article in Broadly notes:

“[On Katelyn’s website you] will find videos for sale – many of which feature miniature, plastic people being swallowed or crushed under huge feet. There are also stories, comics, photographs, collages, a blog, and a link to Katelyn’s Amazon wish list, so her worshippers can purchase her gifts: underwear, Starbucks gift cards, vitamins so she can ‘grow’ bigger, and non-stick saucepans. Visiting the site is free, but each month around 700 of her fans make a purchase”.

My own research into macrophilia suggests that the overwhelming majority of macrophiles appear to be heterosexual males that are sexually attracted to female giantesses. However, I’ve also noted that even non-sexual scenarios involving giants can result in sexual stimulation. Each fantasy situation is different for every macrophile as the behaviour is fantasy-based. Even the preferred heights of the fantasy giants differ between individuals. For instance, some macrophiles have a preference for people only a few feet taller than themselves, whereas others involve giants who are hundreds of feet high.

In the Broadly article, Katelyn admitted she had other sexual fetishes including an “extreme mouth fetish” of similar intensity to her giantess fetish as well as furry and hentai fetishes (anime and manga pornography). This concurs with what I noted in my previous blog on macrophilia where I said that it had also been associated with other sexual paraphilias. I claimed the most noteworthy were:

• Breast fetishism: This is a sexual fetish in which an individual derives sexual arousal from being pressed against, or placed in between, the breasts of a giant woman.
• Dominance/submission: This is a sexual fetish in which an individual derives sexual pleasure being at the mercy of a giant, or from being in control of a tiny person.
• Sadism/masochism: This is a sexual paraphilia in which an individual derives sexual pleasure from being physically harmed or even killed (in this case by a giant).
• Vorarephilia: This is a sexual paraphilia in which individuals derive sexual arousal from the idea of being eaten, eating another person, or observing this process. Although there are cases of real life vorarephilia (that I wrote about in a previous blog), the behaviour is typically fantasy-based (e.g., fictional stories, fantasy art, fantasy videos, and bespoke video games).
• Zoophilia: This is a sexual paraphilia in which individuals derive sexual pleasure from sex with animals (in this case, the desire is to have sex with a giant animal that is given human characteristics (i.e., anthropomorphism). This also has some crossover with furries (those individuals who – amongst other behaviours – like to dress as animals when having sex)
• Crush fetishism: This is a sexual fetish in which an individual derives sexual arousal from being stepped or sat on by a giant person, and is also a variant of sexual masochism.

When Monk interviewed me, one of the most important questions she wanted an answer for was how people develop macrophilic tendencies. I told her that the roots of most fetishes lie in childhood and early adolescence where sexual arousal is, at first, accidentally associated with giants – maybe watching a TV programme where a giantess initiates feelings of sexual arousal. Over time the giant itself is enough to cause sexual arousal through classical conditioning. However, as there are no case studies in the literature, this is complete speculation on my part. However, she also interviewed one of Katelyn’s ‘worshippers’ (‘Mark’) who appeared to confirm my speculative thoughts.

“[I remember] seeing a re-run of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman when [I] was around 13 years old. The [point of view] of Allison Hayes walking across the desert was the first time I can recall being turned on. Seeing her tear the roof off of the building to get at her husband overwhelmed my young brain at the time. Shortly after that, another movie called Village of the Giants did the same thing. I can remember one of the giantesses in the movie said something like ‘Oh, why don’t I just step on him?’ which again turned my underage mind on like nothing prior. I would be uncontrollably drawn to [the giantess’] beauty and power despite the danger such an encounter would bring. As a superior being, she would have little regard for me other than supplying her own needs. Whether it be as food to nourish her superior body, or as a sexual play toy to be used and broken after, I would have no other choice other than submit myself to her. To have my life be hers to do with as she pleased would become the sole purpose for my existence. The exhilaration, danger, fear and sexual excitement would outweigh my very instinct for survival. I only wish it would become real”.

For her article, Monk also interviewed the Australian sex and relationship therapist Pamela Supple. Supple claimed that:

“Power, domination and vulnerability are at the heart of macrophilia. It’s allowing your mind to go wherever it wants to go, whilst engaging in play to gain the maximum sexual arousal. Some want to feel and experience terror – being crushed or controlled. Everyone is different in what they want to experience.”

Both I and Supple agree that macrophilia has enjoyed a massive surge in popularity in the past few years, with both of us citing the crucial role of the internet in helping to both create and facilitate the fetish “and, in some cases, introducing the fetish to those who have been looking for a name for what they feel”. This was confirmed by another one of Katelyn’s worshippers (‘Semeraz’). As he explained:

“[I didn’t know macrophilia’ was a thing” until [I] discovered Katelyn’s website. Before then, remember being in fifth grade and playing a game where the teacher assigned team names of ‘predator’ and ‘prey’ and becoming excited when a girl taunted him saying: ‘We’re going to eat you!’ But I never thought of it as a sexual fetish until running into Katelyn’s site”.

Since writing my article on macrophilia over four years ago, the presence of maxcrophilia online appears to have grown. Katelyn claims that her website was very niche when she set it up a number of years ago:

“It only had a handful of websites and contributors, a lot of lurkers – fetishes were much more taboo a decade ago – the content production was scarce and I was the only girl who had come out of the closet with the giantess fetish. Members thought there was no way a girl could have the giantess fetish. That made me feel alone, because I was the only giantess, and a lot of people doubted my sexuality. Nowadays, there’s so much giantess fetish content that you wouldn’t be able to see everything in a lifetime. There are millions of collages, stories, artists, producers, models, videos, and more.”

I’m not sure there are “millions of collages, stories, artists, producers, models, videos” out there on the internet but macrophilia is probably a lot less rare than I thought a few years ago.

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

Further reading

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.

Bowen, J. (1999). Urge: A giant fetish. Salon, May 22. Located at: http://www.salon.com/1999/05/22/macrophilia/

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

Love, B. (1992). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books.

Monk, F. (2016). The men who want to have sex with actual giants. Broadly, October 26. Located at: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/macrophilia-fetish-the-men-who-want-to-have-sex-with-actual-giants

Pearson, G.A. (1991). Insect fetish objects. Cultural Entomology Digest, 4, (November).

Ramses, S. (undated). Introduction to macrophilia. Located at: http://www.pridesites.com/fetish/mac4black/intro2macro.htm

Slothrop, T. (2012). The Bible and Macrophilia: He Thong’s Goliath Art. Remnant of Giants, February 6. Located at: https://remnantofgiants.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/the-bible-and-macrophilia-he-thongs-goliath-art/

Ova and out there: A brief look at ‘alien egg’ fetishes

When I originally started researching material for this blog, it was going to be about ‘insertion fantasy fetishes’ which refer to the sexual desires or fantasies of having something inserted into a person via any means in the pelvic region (vaginally, anally), with the insertion object typically being something out of the ordinary such as specifically shaped foods, abnormal objects, or even whole people (and which borders with sexual parahilias such as macrophilia and microphilia that I examined in previous blogs). However, when I typed in the words to Google, one article jumped out at me, an article in the online magazine Vice entitled ‘The emerging fetish of laying alien eggs inside yourself’ by Toby McCasker.

I am no stranger to the literature on alien fetishes and in a previous blog I reviewed the scant literature on exophilia (individuals who derive sexual pleasure and arousal from extraterrestrial, robotic, supernatural, or otherwise non-human life forms). The overwhelming majority of exophiles never claim to have had sex with an alien but claim that they are sexually excited and aroused by the thought of doing so. However, the topic of this blog does not fall under exophilia but does comprise an activity that could said to be part of an ‘insertion fetish’.

After reading the rest of this blog you may come to the conclusion that it is a thinly disguised advert for Primal Hardwere (PH) but I can assure you that it isn’t. It just happens that the focus of this article (sexual arousal from the insertion of ‘alien eggs’ into the vagina or anus) uses a product that is only available (as far as I am aware) from PH. McCasker’s article started like a number of my own:

“Recently, while on the internet looking at weird sex things, I came upon the gushing testimony of a young woman who had just discovered Primal Hardwere’s patented Ovipositor; one of the most unusual and confronting sex toys I’ve ever heard of. The Ovipositor is basically a big dildo that lays goopy eggs molded from gelatin in the body cavity of your choice. Fans of the Ovipositor say that the sensation of mushy extraterrestrial ovum slopping back out of them is a real treat. The owner of Primal Hardwere is a man who insisted I refer to him only as LoneWolf. A Native American of indeterminate age, he apparently worked as a builder, fast food dude, fashion model, church organist, butcher, and pursued veterinary medicine at the University of New Hampshire”.

For those who are unaware, an ovipositor is an organ used by some animals for the laying of eggs and the most infamous ovipositor I can think of is the one belonging to the alien queen xenomorph in the film Alien: Resurrection. (In fact, the original title of this article was going to be ‘Ripley’s believe it or not’ given that the heroine of all the Alien films is Ellen Ripley, but I decided that too few people would appreciate the pun). McCasker asked the developer of the Ovipostor dildo to explain the product and the thinking behind it:

“The idea is to replicate the act of being impregnated with eggs. Usually from an alien or insect. If you’ve seen the Aliens movies, you’ll get the picture. Many people find this sort of thing very arousing. The toys are simply phallic-shaped hollow tubes that can be used to insert gelatin eggs into oneself. There is a funnel-shaped hole in the bottom to receive the eggs, which are inserted one by one, forcing them up the tube and out the top…Let’s face it, there are three things that will always sell: Food, death, and sex. I tried food service and decided after managing three restaurants and owning one that it was the same thing, day in and day out, and it didn’t look like that was going to change much. Death didn’t really interest me. I wanted something more fun. Something that breaks the monotony of people’s days and makes them spit out their coffee when you tell them what you do…I wanted to push the boundaries of people’s comfort levels, make them question their own erections and wet panties, and let them know their fantasies do not have to go unrealized”.

Obviously PH didn’t start making the ovipositor dildos on a whim but it all began after ‘LoneWolf’ had created some one-off customized commissions prior to setting up PH. Unsurprisingly, no other company was (and is) making such products and ‘LoneWolf’ saw a gap in the market (or created a new market depending upon your perspective). As he told McCasker:

“Ovipositors were requested several times, and when I posted YouTube videos demonstrating them, the response was impressive. Tons of people wanted them – and while this is not a fetish of my own, I saw potential for a unique product line…[In terms of who buys the ovipositor dildos] the real answer here is simply ‘people’. I truly can’t say that it’s strictly one group or mindset or any other kind of convenient stereotype that like these sorts of things. People get turned on by many things beyond what our respective societies would deem ‘normal’ We are niche in the sense that we’re catering to some of the lesser catered-to fetishes. We send our products all over the world to many different races, creeds, and cultures…[In terms of appeal] there are different perspectives of everything, and Ovipositors are no exception. Many like to envision an alien creature that wants its eggs inside you. It can be a little intimidating or off-putting to those who do not fantasize about being the willing or unwilling host of alien beings inside them. It blurs the line of our own humanity to find sexual pleasure with something that is so far from human, and for some, just talking about it gets them wet”.

McCasker also wanted to know if there is any danger of inserting gelatin eggs into the vagina and anus and replied:

“Everything in moderation. We are not doctors, and we’re not about to comment on what is safe or unsafe to do to one’s body as it varies from person to person. I can say that I have used them many times without hurting myself, but frankly it is up to the person using it to know their own limits. For instance, if you are allergic to gelatin. If made properly, the eggs are firm, but rubbery, similar to the consistency of gummy bears. They dissolve with body heat rather quickly”.

I’m sure that such an explanation would not encourage many individuals to try out such a sex toy (and you may want to read my previous blog on rectal foreign bodies before making any such decision). Following the publication of McCasker’s article, dozens of other online news outlets picked up on the story (such as that in Uproxx, Nuvo, Philly Mag and Bust) and in some cases made the national UK tabloid news (such as a story in the Daily Star). What is not made clear is that individuals wanting to use the Ovipostor have to make the gelatin eggs themselves (but at least there’s a YouTube video to show you how). There are also a number of different types of Ovipostor including the Splorch and the Krubera. (I ought to just mention that although PH appears to be the only company that makes egg-producing dildos, other alien-inspired dildos are on the market (and overviewed in an article by Ben Hayward on the Unilad website).

It’s hard to know whether using such niche sex toys is a genuine fetish but PH are making money from selling such products so it would appear that some people out there are at least experimenting with alien imagery and alien-like artefacts as part of their sex lives.

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

Further reading

Baumgartner, S. (2015). This fun sex toy lets you lay eggs. Wait what? Located at: http://bust.com/sex/14643-why-does-this-dildo-have-everyone-buzzing.html

Black Panther (2015). Alien impregnation (has any opinions changed?)[sic]. Preggophilia, March 21. Located at: http://preggophilia.com/alien-impregnation-has-any-opinions-changed-t

Butler, B. (2015). Newest sexual fetish: Getting alien eggs laid inside you. Philly Mag, August 17. Located at: http://www.phillymag.com/g-philly/2015/08/17/newest-sexual-fetish-getting-alien-eggs-laid-inside-you/

Daily Star (2015). Weirdest sex toy ever? Fake alien penis designed to lay eggs in people, December 9. Located at: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/480485/alien-dildo-ovipositor-Primal-Hardwere-Lone-Wolf

Hayward, B. (2015). These alien fetish dildos will blow your mind. Unilad, December 30. Located at: http://www.unilad.co.uk/nsfw/these-alien-fetish-dildos-will-blow-your-mind/

McCasker, T. (2015). The emerging fetish of laying alien eggs inside yourself. Vice, August 13. Located: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-emerging-fetish-of-laying-alien-eggs-inside-yourself

Murrell, S. (2015). So, this is a thing: Alien egg impregnation dildos. Nuvo, October 19. Located at: http://www.nuvo.net/AsktheSexDoc/archives/2015/10/19/so-this-is-a-thing-alien-egg-impregnation-dildos

Ritzen, S. (2015). Feast your eyes on this new alien egg-laying dildo fetish. Uproxx, August 13. Located at: http://uproxx.com/webculture/alien-egg-laying-dildo-fetish/

Watson, Z. (2016). Jeff Goldblum, splorching, and the alien intercourse fetish. Inverse, June 30. Located at: https://www.inverse.com/article/17671-jeff-goldblum-sexy-alien-invasion-fetish-splorch

Step toe and fun: Another look at trampling fetishism

“I’m a guy and I LOVE being walked on by women wearing high heels. It doesn’t hurt. Is this normal to have women step on my guy parts with high heels?” (Question posted on a Yahoo! website).

In a previous blog I briefly looked at ‘trampling fetishism’. According to a relatively new Wikipedia entry on the behaviour:

“Trampling refers to the sexual activity that involves being trampled underfoot by another person or persons. Trampling is common enough to support a sub-genre of trampling pornography. Because trampling can be used to produce pain, the trampling fetish for some adherents is closely linked to sadomasochistic fetishism. A similar fetish is to imagine themselves as being tiny under another’s feet, or being normal size, but being trampled by a giant person. This is known as ‘giant/giantess fetishism’ or macrophilia. It is not the same as trampling. The most common form of trampling is done by a male or female walking on a male or female submissive and is usually done barefooted, in socks, nylons, or shoes. The trampler will predominantly walk, jump and stomp on the person’s back, chest, stomach, genitalia, face and in some rare instances, the neck”.

If you type ‘trampling fetish’ into Google, lots of YouTube video clips appear instantly. Video clips of trampling have been present on the internet since 1997 courtesy of an number of infamous American tramples such as ‘Daddo’ ‘Kingfish’ and ‘LAF’. If you’re not into the visual side, you can read various forms of trampling fan fiction such as the stories at the Trample and Crushing website.

Since writing my previous blog on this topic, I filmed an interview about a trampling fetishist as part of the television program Forbidden (on which I was the resident psychologist). The television program that I participated in followed the story of a man called Frank O’Brien. Frank recalls his fetish developing during early to mid- adolescence. As a 15-year old teenager, he would trick the girls he knew into stepping on him by inventing games that resulted in him being trampled upon. As the show’s production notes reported:

“[Frank would] invent games to race girls to the door of his cubby house and have them wrestle or sit on him in the process. In the backyard pool he’d encourage them to step on him underwater. Ever since he can remember Frank has wanted to get under a girl’s foot…You could say Frank gets a ‘kick’ out of it. And among friends Frank is known simply as ‘Step on Me.’ For Frank, there’s nothing finer than having a woman walk all over him”.

By his early thirties Frank’s trampling fetish began to take up more and more of his time. In his social life he started attending as many sadomasochistic shows that he could and he longed and desired dominant mistresses that would help cater for his trampling fetish. The back-story I received about Frank noted that:

“The mistresses he saw early in life largely turned Frank away from the idea of trampling. They were more prostitutes than professional mistresses with an idea of what he really wanted. Back in those days there was no training for mistresses in trampling and this really has only taken off in Australia since the early 2000s. Now there are mistresses who train specifically in trampling”.

According to Frank, Melbourne is the centre of Australia’s BDSM culture and he introduced the Forbidden film crew to the niche trampling community that exists there. Frank’s favourite club is ‘Provocation’ that hosts a monthly fetish social event.

“But his idea of getting down on the dance floor is a little different to most. When Frank gets down, he literally gets down. He has a special mat that he lies on to make the experience slightly more bearable but comfort is not exactly what Frank is looking for. He’ll bring with him a platform that he’ll set up beside his mat; written across it are the words ‘step up here – girls only’. And that’s exactly what Frank wants. He’ll lie there for hours in the club, enjoying the feeling of women trampling him. Some wear stilettos, some are in platform shoes and others go barefooted – he doesn’t discriminate about what kind of footwear is permitted, but generally sharper and more pointy shoes offer greater satisfaction for [him]”.

Frank describes himself naturally submissive and he now has weekly trampling sessions with ‘Mistress Spanklet’ who is Frank’s long-term friend and a Dom-sub ‘play partner’. Frank describes these weekly sessions as his “drug fix” and something he “couldn’t live without”. Despite having some of his bowel removed (and it being dangerous for him for someone to trample on his stomach), he cannot stop it. He now tries to avoid ‘tummy trampling’ but notes that:

“Trampling can be on any part of the body, including the more sensitive regions of the face, throat and genitalia. [He] enjoys cock and ball trampling on a weekly basis with Spanklet. His face, arms and legs are also prime trampling ground in private and in public”.

In fact, Frank claims that he was responsible for the first ever penis trampling photograph on the internet. In 1999, Frank claimed he took the full weight of a woman in sharp red stilettos twisting as hard as she could on his penis. Frank claims the photograph (taken by the woman’s sexual partner) kick-started “the worldwide cock trampling trend”.

There appears to be little academic research on the topic but anecdotal evidence suggests there is (unsurprisingly) an overlap between trampling fetishes and foot fetishes (podophilia) – on which there is quote a lot of academic research given it appears to be the most prevalent type of fetishism. Obviously Frank’s case is extreme and is heavily interwoven into his life. While there appear to be addictive elements to his behaviour, I don’t believe that Frank’s trampling fetish is an addiction. Bizarre and extreme – yes. Addictive – no. But I’m happy to be proved wrong.

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

Further reading

Semple, K. (2009). Bartender, make it a stiletto. New York Times, June 10. Located at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/fashion/14carpet.html?_r=2&sq=carpet%20man&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1347984561-aHeCVlJANdIr6KwsZQrfvw

Sexy Tofu (2012). National Fetish Day: Interview with a trampler. January 20. Located at: http://sexytofu.com/tag/trampling/

Wikipedia (2012). Talk: Crush fetish. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACrush_fetish

Wikipedia (2012). Trampling. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampling

Bosom buddies: A brief look at breast fetishism

Over the last year, I have received more than a dozen emails (all male) asking why I have not written a blog on ‘breast fetishism’. The main reason I have resisted writing such a blog is that it’s hard to determine where normal love of breasts ends and abnormal love of breasts begins. It won’t surprise anyone reading this that when it comes to male sexual arousal, female breasts are at the top of many men’s lists as the body part they find most sexually attractive. According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, the sexual paraphilia of being aroused by female breasts is mammagymnophilia or mazophilia and comprises “a pronounced fetishistic sexual interest in the female breasts, their shape, movement, and especially their size”. He goes on to write that:

“[Breast fetishism is] also known as mastofact or breast partialism, it refers to an exclusive or almost exclusive reliance on breasts as a stimulus for sexual arousal. It is such a predominant feature of sexuality in the U.S., that Molly Haskell, a feminist and author from the USA, went as far as to say that ‘the mammary fixation is the most infantile and the most American of the sex fetishes’. British zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris sees breast fetishism as a prime example of biosemiotics, by which human sexuality is influenced through signaling”.

While doing my undergraduate degree I did a project on the psychology of female orgasm and read almost every paper and book that I could on sexuality and female sexuality. I read Desmond Morris’ book The Naked Ape and was very interested in Morris’ theories on sexual signalling. If memory serves me, Morris argued that women’s breasts had evolved to look like female buttocks as humans had slowly changed the way they had sex from males mounting females from the rear to face-to-face sex. In the 1998 book Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications by Charles Crawford and Dennis Krebs (1998) it was theorized that humans’ permanently enlarged breasts allows females to “solicit male attention and investment even when they are not really fertile”. These hypotheses was also mentioned in the 2012 book The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction but rejected by the authors. Young and Alexander wrote:

“Biologically speaking the human male’s obsession with breasts is pretty weird. Men are the only male mammals fascinated by breasts in a sexual context. And women are the only female mammals whose breasts become enlarged at puberty, independent of pregnancy. We are also the only species in which males caress, massage and even orally stimulate the female breasts during foreplay and sex. Boys don’t learn on the playground that breasts are something that they should be interested in. It’s biological and deeply engrained in our brain. Man’s obsession with breasts is an unconscious evolutionary drive that helps humans forge loving, nurturing bonds”.

In fact, Young and Alexander forward a more biological explanation and went on to claim that it was oxytocin that best explained why women had developed breasts:

“When a woman gives birth, her newborn will engage in some pretty elaborate manipulations of its mother’s breasts. This stimulation sends signals along nerves and into the brain. There, the signals trigger the release of a neurochemical called oxytocin from the brain’s hypothalamus. This oxytocin release eventually stimulates smooth muscles in a woman’s breasts to eject milk, making it available to her nursing baby. But oxytocin release has other effects, too. When released at the baby’s instigation, the attention of the mother focuses on her baby. The infant becomes the most important thing in the world. Oxytocin and dopamine act together to help ‘imprint’ the newborn’s face, smell and sounds into the mother’s reward circuitry, making breastfeeding and nurturing a pleasurable experience that will motivate her to keep doing those activities to strengthen the mother-infant bond. This bond is not only the most beautiful of all social bonds, it can also be the most enduring, lasting a lifetime. When a lover touches, massages or nibbles a woman’s breasts, it sparks the same process of brain events as nursing.  Humans are also among the very few animals that have sexual intercourse face-to-face, looking into each other’s eyes. This quirk in human sexuality has evolved to exploit the ancient mother-infant bonding brain circuitry as a way to help form bonds between lovers. Because the release of oxytocin forces the brain’s attention to a partner’s face, smell and voice, the combination of oxytocin release during breast stimulation, and the increase of dopamine from the pleasure of foreplay and face-to-face sex, helps to forge an association of the lover’s face and eyes with the pleasurable feelings, building a bond in the women’s brain”

I was surprised to find there had been little empirical research on the role of breast and nipple stimulation in influencing sexual arousal during sex. In 2006, Dr. Roy Levin and Dr. Cindy Meston published a paper in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and claimed that there had never been a study that questioned people about breasts and sexual arousal. Consequently, Levin and Meston surveyed 301 “sexually experienced undergraduates” (148 males and 153 females mostly between the ages of 18 and 22). The authors reported:

“81.5% [of women] reported that stimulation of their nipples/ breasts caused or enhanced their sexual arousal, 78.2% agreed that when sexually aroused such manipulation increased their arousal, 59.1% had asked to have their nipples stimulated during lovemaking, and only 7.2% found that the manipulation decreased their arousal. In regard to the men, 51.7% reported that nipple stimulation caused or enhanced their sexual arousal, 39% agreed that when sexually aroused such manipulation increased their arousal, only 17.1% had asked to have their nipples stimulated, and only 7.5% found that such stimulation decreased their arousal”.

When it comes to breast fetishism, it could be argued that there are many different sub-types. Reading Dr. Aggrawal’s book alone there are many other types of sexual activity surrounding the fetishizing of the breast. This includes lactophilia (arousal from lactating breasts), oenosugia (pouring wine over female breasts and licking it off), mazophallating (the rubbing of the penis between breasts, and also know as coitus a mammilla), mazoperosis (sexual gratification from mutilating of female breasts – arguably the most extreme form of what Dr. Aggrawal describes as “tit torture, the sexual gratification from any of several erotic BDSM activities focusing solely on inflicting pain on the breast, nipples, and areola”), and ‘downblousing’:

“[Downblousing] is a variant of voyeurism where the voyeur is attracted to women bending downward so he can view their breasts down their shirt or blouse. Viewing a woman’s breast while sitting on a. higher level than the woman is also downblousing. A good example is a person sitting on first floor of a restaurant, viewing the breasts of an unsuspecting woman sitting on the ground floor taking surreptitious photographs, especially with camera-enabled cell phones, is also common among voyeurs. Many times, these photographs are then posted on the Internet for all to see. Many nations and jurisdictions have now outlawed downblousing”.

There are also other sexual behaviours that may (or may not) involve breasts as the focus of sexual arousal. For instance, anaclitism refers to “the sexual enjoyment arising from activities, or being exposed to objects normally associated with childhood (e.g., toilet training, breast sucking, playing with dolls)”. One breast-focused sexual fetish not mentioned by Dr. Aggrawal at all is ‘breast expansion fetishism’. According to the Nation Master website:

“Breast expansion fetishism is a sexual fetish characterized by pronounced sexual fantasies involving a woman whose breasts enlarge, either gradually or suddenly, sometimes to gargantuan proportions. Breast expansion fetishism may manifest as a form of inflation fetishism. Many breast expansion fetishists are fascinated by the processes by which women’s breasts can become larger, whether from age progression, pregnancy, weight gain or surgery. It is not uncommon for them to examine closely the careers of adult and mainstream entertainers and their increasing, or decreasing, bust sizes…Many breast-expansion fetishists are morphers. A morph is a photograph, an artwork, an animation which uses morphing techniques to expand a woman’s breasts”.

In the name of research I went onto Google Scholar and unsurprisingly turned up little academic. However, I was surprised to find many breast expansion sites including websites like the Big Breast Expansion, Overflowing Bra, Breast Expansion Grove (with lots of links to other breast expansion websites) and Boob Growth (please be warned these sites are sexually explicit if you click on the links) as well as sites like Literotica with a dedicated breast expansion page of fan fiction. Breast expansion is also very popular in both Manga and Anime cartoons.

I also found various first-person accounts of young adult males admitting to having such fetishes:

“I have a breast expansion fetish. No matter what, I always find myself coming back to this. In so many ways it’s amazing. Slowly, suddenly, sporadically, I like to see them grow. But I have my limits of when it gets stupidly huge (bigger than their body size). But I also have a thing of [breast expansion] on myself, like to be gender changed, then added in bigger boobs. I have been off and on with this stuff for years” (MD12, The Experience Project).

“I am searching for help and I hope I could find it here. My problem is…I have a breast expansion fetish. I [get an] erection when I [see] female breasts are growing. It started when I had seen [the] film ‘The Adventures of Pluto Nash’ in hospital. Since [then I am] always looking [for] comics, videos and pictures with growing breasts. Now I am 18 years old, I have marvelous girlfriend and we love each other. I told her about my problem and understand it, but she has forbidden me to masturbate on growing breasts…We have awesome sex but I still want to watch growing breasts. And don’t know what to do now. I don’t wont to lie, and masturbate when I [am] alone, and I don’t know how to beat this fetish. Often I am imagining [my girlfriend] with growing breasts…I hope you can help me”. (Joishi, PsychForums)

I also found what I thought was an article on the psychology of breast expansion but it was a male on the Overflowing Forum trying to analyse his own behaviour (but I found it of interest). Unfortunately, the original post has disappeared but I managed to cut and paste the self-analysis before it disappeared:

“I´m very interested in the psychology of breast expansion fetish – my obsession. I think the expansion aspect is one of many others. I like expansion stuff, but as a category it does not seem meaningful. To me, these aspects are of relevance (i) deviance [standing out from the norm], sensuality [a focus on the physical body], and emotional sensitivity [for symbolic power and interpersonal processes]. First, I´m generally attracted to stuff that defies the norm, like Lady Gaga and Beth Ditto or Slayer, the Marquis de Sade, monster movies. Second: I am fascinated by the body/mind duality of the human existence…Prominent flesh puts the focus on the body, the animal aspect of our being. And prominent breasts especially have sexual and/or nurturing connotations. Third, body parts can be seen [as] anatomical, but also on a symbolic level, they can be a means to express and execute power over others, or they can be presented as a gift – craving, desire, attention, power…a certain tension, an emotional disbalance is important for me. Big breasts can be just a nuisance for a girl or woman – for good reasons – or something they hardly care about, and then they lose most of their erotic power they could have on me”.

Like many other sexual paraphilias I have written about (such as macrophilia, microphilia, exophilia, and vorarephilia), much of the breast expansion community appears to base a lot of the online activity around fan fiction and fan art. As the Nation Master article on breast expansion notes:

“Breast expansion stories are often fantastical tales of women’s busts being enlarged by air, food, magic, medicine, alien technology or some other unseen force. Generally, the amount of enlargement is limited only by the imagination of the author, from as little as a cup size to as big as room-filling and beyond. Occasionally, there are other types of fetishes included in these stories, such as lactation, anthropomorphism, giantess, transgender, body inflation, penis expansion, or any of the processes under the umbrella term transformation fetish. Stories and pictures associated with breast expansion sometimes contain vivid depictions of sexual activity, but it is not a necessity of the fetish” 

This brief overview has highlighted that when it comes to breast fetishism and its many variants, that there is surprisingly little scientific research.

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.

Crawford, C. & Krebs, D, (1998). How Mate Choice Shaped Human Nature. Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,

Levin, R. J. (2006). The breast/nipple/areola complex and human sexuality. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 21, 237-249

Levin, R., & Meston, C. (2006). Nipple/breast stimulation and sexual arousal in young men and women. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 3(3), 450-454.

Nation Master (2014). Breast expansion fetish. Located at: http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Breast-expansion-fetish

Wikipedia (2014). Breast fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_fetishism

Young, L. & Alexander, B. (2012). The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction. London: Penguin.

Blog-nitive psychology: 500 articles and counting

It’s hard for me to believe that this is the 500th article that I have published on my personal blog. It’s also the shortest. I apologise that it is not about any particular topic but a brief look back at what my readers access when they come across my site. (Regular readers might recall I did the same thing back in October 2012 in an article I wrote called ‘Google surf: What does the search for sex online say about someone?’). As of August 26 (2014), my blog had 1,788,932 visitors and is something I am very proud of (as I am now averaging around 3,500 visitors a day). As I write this blog, my most looked at page is my blog’s home page (256,262 visitors) but as that changes every few days this doesn’t really tell me anything about people like to access on my site.

Below is a list of all the blogs that I have written that have had over 10,000 visitors (and just happens to be 25 articles exactly).

• Coprophilia (40,001)
• Urophilia (38,933)
• Somnophilia (22,291)
• Trampling fetishes (20,651)
• Urethral manipulation (20,234)
• Scrotal infusion (20,041)
• Genital bisection (18,715)
• Felching (18,193)
• Vorarephilia (16,566)
• Insect sting fetishes (16,236)
• Transformation fetishes (15,731)
• Amputee fetishes (15,467)
• Macrophilia (15,322)
• Sexual masochism (13,937)
• Formicophilia (13,655)
• Eproctophilia (13,295)
• Lactophilia (12,656)
• Equinophilia (12,434)
• Spit fetishes (12,259)
• Menophilia (11,855)
• Paraphilic infantilism (11,590)
• Zoophilia (11,235)
• Transvestic fetishism (10,661)
• Forniphilia (10,046)
• Necrophilia (10,020)

The first thing that struck me about my most read about articles is that they all concern sexual fetishes and paraphilias (in fact the top 30 all concern sexual fetishes and paraphilias – the 31st most read article is one on coprophagia [7,250 views] with my article on excessive nose picking being the 33rd most read [6,745 views]). This obviously reflects either (a) what people want to read about, and/or (b) reflect issues that people have in their own lives.

I’ve had at least five emails from readers who have written me saying (words to the effect of) “Why can’t you write what you are supposed to write about (i.e., gambling)?” to which I reply that although I am a Professor of Gambling Studies, I widely research in other areas of addictive behaviour. I simply write about the extremes of human behaviour and things that I find of interest. (In fact, only one article on gambling that I have written is in the top 100 most read articles and that was on gambling personality [3,050 views]). If other people find them of interest, that’s even better. However, I am sometimes guided by my readers, and a small but significant minority of the blogs I have written have actually been suggested by emails I have received (my blogs on extreme couponing, IVF addiction, loom bands, ornithophilia, condom snorting, and haircut fetishes come to mind).

Given this is my 500th article in my personal blog, it won’t come as any surprise to know that I take my blogging seriously (in fact I have written academic articles on the benefits of blogging and using blogs to collect research data [see ‘Further reading’ below] and also written an article on ‘addictive blogging’!). Additionally (if you didn’t already know), I also have a regular blog column on the Psychology Today website (‘In Excess’), as well as regular blogging for The Independent newspaper, The Conversation, GamaSutra, and Rehabs.com. If there was a 12-step ‘Blogaholics Anonymous’ I might even be the first member.

“My name is Mark and I am a compulsive blogger”

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

Further reading

Griffiths, M.D. (2012). Blog eat blog: Can blogging be addictive? April 23. Located at: https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/blog-eat-blog-can-blogging-be-addictive/

Griffiths, M.D. (2012). Stats entertainment: A review of my 2012 blogs. December 31. Located at: https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/stats-entertainment-a-review-of-my-2012-blogs/

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). How writing blogs can help your academic career. Psy-PAG Quarterly, 87, 39-40.

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Stats entertainment (Part 2): A 2013 review of my personal blog. December 31. Located at: https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/stats-entertainment-part-2-a-2013-review-of-my-personal-blog/

Griffiths, M.D. (2014). Top tips on…Writing blogs. Psy-PAG Quarterly, 90, 13-14.

Griffiths, M.D. (2014). Blogging the limelight: A personal account of the benefit of excessive blogging. May 8. Located at: https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/blogging-the-limelight-a-personal-account-of-the-benefits-of-excessive-blogging/

Griffiths, M.D., Lewis, A., Ortiz de Gortari, A.B. & Kuss, D.J. (2014). Online forums and blogs: A new and innovative methodology for data collection. Studia Psychologica, in press.

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

Waxing lyrical: A brief look at earwax obsession and fetishes

Back in 1991 while I was holidaying in Goa (India), I was lying on the beach with my (then) girlfriend (next to a dead dolphin, but that’s another story) when suddenly I felt something being stuck into my ears. It was a Goan man making a living out of removing earwax from the tourists with a specially designed earpick. At the time, I didn’t think much of it and all I can recall was speaking to one of the staff at the hotel reception about it. She said to me that for some people in the locality, earwax was “almost an obsession”.

Recently, I was re-reminded of this incident when I came across an article on Danny Brown’s webpage called ‘The completely pointless Google experiment’. Brown’s pointless experiment was to find ridiculous and obscure facts by typing various phrases into Google to discover what came back as the number 1 result. One of the phrases he typed in was “What is the weirdest earwax story ever?” He wrote that:

“Now I’m not one of these people that have a fetish for ear wax (and yes, they DO exist!) but this seemed like a rather innocuous question. According to the #1 result on Google, it’s using ear wax as a remedy for cold sores, as found on the Remedicated website, under ’15 of the weirdest home remedies as folk treatments ever’”

I wasn’t interested in the top-rated story (although I did read the Wikipedia entry on earwax and discovered that “many types of whales have a build-up of earwax which increases with time; the size of the deposit is sometimes the only way to determine the age of whales that do not have teeth”). What garnered my interest was Brown’s assertion that earwax fetishes “DO exist” (his emphasis, not mine). My first online search led to websites talking about mimikaki. The term ‘mimikaki’ is a Japanese word and describes the act of picking earwax out of the ears. I also read that the removal of earwax is often done in the context of lover’s grooming customs and rituals with one website claiming that “as with practically every aspect of Japanese culture, mimikaki is often fetishized”. The same website claimed that mimikaki services can be bought in a variety of Japanese establishments that offer massage and other grooming services. Someone else writing on the same website also noted:

“Ear picks are a commonly used item and preferred for earwax removal in East Asia. The person having their ears cleaned would lie down with their head in the lap of the person doing the cleaning. It is generally considered a pleasant feeling, like having one’s back scratched. The cleaning of ears is thus considered an act of intimacy, often performed by a mother to a child or, among adults, by one’s lover. It may also be performed alone or by professional (non-medical) ear cleaners on the streets of cities in countries such as China, India, Japan, Vietnam, and other Asian countries”

Having read this, I decided to see what it out there on earwax obsessions and fetishes. Academically, I found nothing (at least in relation to sexual fetishes). In the online world I came across various snippets relating to sexual earwax fetishes. An article about “five freaky fetishes” on the Daily Radar website included a paragraph on earwax fetishes and noted:

“Earwax. We’ve all heard of shit, piss, puke and so on fetishes. Frankly, I find them a little boring. Been there, done that…But I know there’s a big market out there for bodily fluids, so I came up with one you’ve likely not heard of before: earwax. It tastes like ambrosia if it was all waxy and it fits into many crevices of the body…It’s like naturally occurring honey is what it’s like! I don’t know why other bodily fluid fetishes have been popular enough to inspire Internet ‘memes’ while this earwax thing has yet to gain traction”

A 2010 news item in The Sportsman’s Daily claimed that Bill Belichick, head coach of the American football team New England Patriots had an ear/wax fetish. He was reported to have said: “I’m into Q-Tips. Any kind of swab basically. I enjoy sniffing ear wax. The hard of hearing really get my juices flowing. And I’ve got a headphone collection that would make the folks at Sony sit up and take notice”. In the same story, a sex therapist Dr. Clifton Hamels claimed that ear fetishes are among the rarest of fetishes. More specifically he said: “I’ve only had one patient that was into aural. But perhaps now that a high profile coach has let it all be heard, so to speak, other people will come forward and tell the world how they’re into ear”.

I managed to locate a few individuals on various online forums who claimed to have an earwax fetish. Most (but not all) of these were sexually based. Here are some examples

• Extract 1: “I have a huge earwax fetish…Sometimes I like to have fantasies of swimming in men’s earwax. It makes me super horny and I can get orgasms by just thinking of it…I also have a fantasy where I find this giant guy and I have him shove me in his ear and use me as a Q-tip. Does anyone else have these types of fantasies or is it just me?”
• Extract 2: “My fetish is horrible but I love it. have this earwax fetish. I sometimes daydream about swimming in a guy’s ears and drink the wax out of his ears. It makes me horny as hell. I sometimes imagine a guy pouring wax out of his ears and I start drinking and bathing the wax. I also do this as I’m masturbating and I get orgasms. I think of a lot of things about earwax to get horny. I hope I’m not alone because it is great and fills me with orgasmic energy. Sometimes I go without a month without cleaning my ears and sit on the toilet and pick my ears and eat it while masturbating and imagine its’ a guys ear wax”
• Extract 3: “Which of you ladies gets turned on by a man with lots of hot, yellow goop in his ears? I tend to have a lot of wax in my ears when I wake up and wonder if any pretty mommas around here find that sexy? Do you fantasize looking into my ear seeing something that looks like an apple pie cooking in an oven and just want to shove your tongue in there and dig out all that steamy slop. Sometimes I have so much it falls out and looks like pieces of buttered popcorn laying on my pillow”
• Extract 4: “As it turns out, the guy has an ear wax fetish. Yup, he wanted me to use a Q-tip and clean out his ears. Then, he wanted to clean out mine. I couldn’t handle it and did everything I could to avoid the dreaded Q-tip. In the process of getting to know Ear Wax Boy, G got engaged. I was devastated, Ear Wax could sense I wasn’t ready to move on, and the romance ended”
• Extract 5: “I don’t know if this is a fetish or what but I will explain. I have a earwax problem, I get quite a bit of it in my ears if I don’t keep them cleaned out. I find myself during the day sticking pin lids and other skinny things into my ears and scraping the earwax out, which I’d say is normal but what isn’t normal is I enjoy smelling the ear wax. I really love the smell and I could sit all day with earwax up to my ears. I think smelling someone else’s would be sick, I only enjoy mine”
  

The first four of these are obviously sexually based while the final one borders more on non-sexual obsession (although I openly admit that it may not be a true obsession). I should also mention that the person in Extract 1 was also a self-admitted coprophile (with sexual fantasies and arousal involving diarrhea), and also appears to have macrophilc tendencies too (i.e., sexual arousal from giants). Additionally, the first two extracts may be the same person writing in two different online forums as the fantasy about being used as a Q-tip also appeared in both accounts (although I edited out this reference in Extract 2). There may be some psychological overlap between earwax fetishes and acnephilia (that I examined in a previous blog). For instance, I observed discussion of “earwax nirvana” on the Pop That Zit website.

Obviously, I have no idea if these online admissions are representative of earwax lovers (or how genuine the accounts are). As I said earlier, there is absolutely no academic or clinical research on the topic of earwax fetishes (and to be honest not likely to be as there doesn’t seem to be any problem associated with such behaviour).

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

Further reading

Brown, D. (2008). The completely pointless Google experiment. November 17. Located at: http://dannybrown.me/2008/11/17/the-completely-pointless-google-experiment/

Choo, D. (2007). Japan hygiene. Culture Japan, August 10. Located at: http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/1026/Japan+Hygiene.html

The Sportsman’s Daily (2010). Belichick one ups Rex Ryan; Admits to rare ear fetish. December 23. Located at: http://sportsmansdaily.com/thescrum/?p=3610

Wikipedia (2012). Earwax. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwax

Flat mates: A brief look at BBW squashing fetishes

While researching a previous blog on fat fetishes, I came across the practice of ‘gut flopping’. According to the online Urban Dictionary, gut flopping is “where a large bellied individual raises his or her stomach and allows it to drop upon his or her sexual partner in a way that creates a smack sound [and] is an act performed for sexual pleasure”. There is an infamous clip on the internet featuring gut flopping (which you can check out here if you are so inclined), but there is little written about it academically (or non-academically for that matter). However, one variant of this that appears to be very popular among a minority of men is ‘BBW squashing’ (i.e., men being squashed by one or more ‘big beautiful women’ for sexual pleasure) and also known as ‘crushing’ or ‘smashing’ by squashing enthusiasts. One such BBW (‘Massive Mocha’) appeared on Dr. Drew’s US television show in October 2011 talking about her experiences as someone who catered for men’s fetish to be sat on and squashed by very large women. ‘Massive Mocha’ revealed that men ask her to sit on them until they feel they are going to pass out from loss of breath.

According to the Squashing Fetish website, there are many variations of the fetish. Heterosexual squashing comprises very obese women squashing smaller (typically thin) men. Homosexual squashing comprises very obese men squashing much smaller men. For some, fantasizing about being squashed may satisfy the sexual fetish. This may include someone (weighing anything from 200 pounds to 600 pounds) sitting, standing, jumping, and/or crushing their face, belly and/or chest (resulting in the person being squashed squirming). The relationship (concerning control) is psychologically similar to the dominant and submissive in sexual sadism and sexual masochism. Being unable to breathe (or breathe properly) appears to be critical in the fetish and in that sense shares similarities with hypoxyphilia (i.e., autoerotic asphyxiation in which individuals derive sexual arousal and pleasure from the restriction of their oxygen supply).

Last year (May 22, 2012), Channel 4 (in the UK) screened Nick Betts’ documentary My Big Fat Fetish. One of the women interviewed at length in the show was BBW Reenaye Starr. She was interviewed by a British tabloid newspaper prior to the show being aired and was asked whether the physical contact associated with a squashing was seen as the ultimate prize by men who pay to be squashed by her. Starr was reported as saying:

“It depends. There are so many different kinds of ‘fat admirers’. Some men are not interested in squashing at all. Some men are just into big ladies looking cute. And then there are some into hardcore pornography who want to see big ladies having sex. It all depends on what your sub-fetish is – but to these men, being with a big woman in any capacity is their ultimate desire. [My] subscribers come from all over the world. But there is definitely a huge following in the UK…I personally – other than my husband – have two feeders who send me money for food online. They don’t physically feed me as they’re too far away but one is based in the US now so he does come in for squashings”

In an online article on BBW squashing (which looks as though it was written by BBW squashers themselves but I can’t be sure), it noted “we may not be able to explain how being squashed can be sexy, but it is an important part of foreplay for those who have this kind of fetish”. The (anonymous) writer confirms my own view that BBW squashing is on the same spectrum as sexual behaviours such as sadomasochism, bondage, and domination “which means that in order to find sexual pleasure, one must feel pain from lack of oxygen, beating, among others”. The article also claims that BBW Squashing “is not as life-threatening as autoerotic asphyxiation since the man can tap the BBW anytime he feels that he’s close to passing out”. It claims that most BBWs engage in squashing for financial reasons and that their primary aim is “to concentrate on the sexual gratification of their clients…Others like Queen Raqui, it’s more like a sport in which she also earns money, without the pressure of having sex with her clients”. The article mainly concerns all the different types of ways that men can be squashed by BBWs.

• Face-Sitting: This position involves the man lying diagonally across a bed with his head at the corner of the bed. The BBW squasher (BBWS) then sits on the man’s head with the man’s face in the BBWS’s crotch. Some BBWSs may move or shake about to enhance the man’s pleasure.
• Sixty-Nine (69): This position involves the man lying flat on the bed while the BBWS lies on top of him so that her face is in the man’s crotch and is facing his legs (and vice-versa). Either partner may stimulate each other’s genitals while in the 69 position.
• Back-Lying: This position involves a man lying on his back with the BBWS sitting on him and crushing his chest and/or face.
• Leg-Captivity: This position involves the BBWS wrapping the man’s head between her legs with the man facing either her crotch or her buttocks. The BBWS may completely suffocate the man in this position (and has to rely on the man to signal to her to let her know when to let go).
• Riding Horse Man: This position (as might be expected from the name) involves the BBWS riding the man like a horse while he is on his front. This is said to increase the man’s sexual arousal.
• Double Trouble: This is not a position as such but involves two BBWSs sitting on a man in any variation of the positions outlined above.

In a previous blog I examined both macrophilia (i.e., sexual pleasure and arousal from giants) and crush fetishes (i.e., sexual pleasure and arousal from crushing or being crushed), and there seems to be some psychological similarity between BBW squashing and these other sexual paraphilias and fetishes. For instance, some macrophiles date extraordinarily tall women (so called ‘Amazons’) even if they have to pay for the privilege to do so. For instance, Mikayla Miles (who when wearing her fetish boots nearly 7 feet in her fetish boots, and 6 feet 4 inches without the boots) provides private sessions with macrophiles to engage in behaviours such as trampling. This has a lot of resonance with BBW squashing. Research has been carried out into both sadomasochistic sexual activity and fat fetishes, but little on where they intersect. This would certainly be a fruitful area for further empirical investigation.

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

Further reading

All Experts (2009). Fetishism/BBW. September 16. Located at: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Fetishism-2835/2009/9/BBW-1.htm

Call Escort Girls (2012). BBW squashing. February 28. Located at: http://callescortgirls.com/bbw-squashing

Leigh, R. (2012). “I work with attractive women who love themselves – what could be more empowering than that?” My Big Fat Fetish’s Reenaye Starr on squashings and whether she feels exploited. Daily Mirror, May 22. Located at: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/my-big-fat-fetish-bbw-model-844022

Monaghan, L. (2005). Big handsome men, bears, and others: Virtual constructions of ‘fat male embodiment’. Body and Society, 11, 81-111.

Murray, S. (2004). Locating aesthetics: Sexing the fat woman. Social Semiotics, 14, 237-247.

Swami, V. & Tovee, M.J. (2009). Big beautiful women: the body size preferences of male fat admirers. Journal of Sex Research, 46, 89-96.

Terry, L.L. & Vasey, P.L. (2011). Feederism in a woman. Archives of Sexial Behavior, 40, 639-645.