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.

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

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.

Shrink rap: A beginner’s guide to microphilia

Microphilia appears to be an increasingly popular sexual paraphilia in which individuals derive sexual arousal from a fascination with small (miniaturized) people and/or a sexual fantasy involving small (miniaturized) people. It is the opposite to macrophilia (i.e., deriving sexual pleasure and arousal from giants or giantesses) that I examined in a previous blog. Such fantasies appear to include the microphiles thinking of others shrinking in front of them (male or female, but shrinking women appears to be more popular based on the content I have looked at on dedicated websites). Alternatively, microphiles may fantasize about their sexual partner shrinking to an abnormal height while the microphiles themselves remain unchanged.

A small article on Wikifur claims that microphilia “may be associated with masochism as opposed to sadism and also closely allied with other paraphilias such as vore [vorarephilia]”. The Urban Dictionary’s definition of microphilia claims that it is “a fetish for unrealistically tiny people or the shrinking of” and that it is “popular in the furry fandom but not exclusive to [it]”. All of these alleged associations are anecdotally based as there has been no empirical research on microphilia whatsoever. As with macrophilia, the reason that this particular paraphilia appears to have increased massively over the last decade is because the internet has played a crucial role in helping create and facilitate the paraphilia. Because the paraphilia is almost totally fantasy-based, much of the material from which microphiles gain their sexual gratification is placed and distributed online. There is a wide range of microphile artwork, photographs, and video on the internet. Applications such as Photoshop are widely used to create collages of fake miniaturized people.

The term ‘microphilia’ is rarely used amongst the microphilic community. They prefer to use the acronym ‘SW’ (shrinking women). I presume there is also an ‘SM’ (shrinking men) community out thee too but they probably don’t use the SM acronym as in sexual circles that is far more likely to be see  as meaning ‘sadomasochism’. Arguably one of the best online forums that cater for those into all things sexually miniature is The Minimizer website. The person that runs the site says of microphilia that:

“It is one of those secret fantasies that’s rarely discussed publicly, sort of like bondage or domination but far less known, probably because it is not something that can be realized in reality. Mostly it’s enjoyed through the imagination, on film or photos/drawings, via writing, or through roleplaying (typically with oversized clothes).

 Basically, the fantasy centers around women being reduced in size. Everyone seems to have their own favorite height. Personally, I like around three inches, where they fit neatly in the palm but aren’t so small you can’t appreciate them. Others like them smaller, but the majority seem to enjoy seeing women at Barbie doll height. This allows them to be used in a variety of sexual ways”.

He also claims that there’s no specific size that seems to be favoured by the SW community, and that in general SW fans “can appreciate a tiny lady at any height, simply for the fact that she’s really small”.

 The sexual fantasies of microphiles appear to be well thought out and elaborate including the specific ways of how the person is shrunk in the first place. Many of these methods appear to have been influenced by film and television portrayals of shrinking humans and (according to The Minimizer’s website include “shrink rays, strange radiation, magic spells or potions, collapsed space, teleportation gone awry, science experiments, [and] alien abduction”.

The Minimizer also claims that not all SW fans are men and that there is a significant minority of women who are microphiles (although he claims that this is more the case of women wanting to be miniaturized themselves for sexual pleasure rather than deriving sexual pleasure from seeing other miniaturized people. There are many facets and dimensions to microphilic sexual fantasies. For instance, there are ethnic preferences for the type of women that microphiles like to see shrunk (such as those who are sexually aroused by a miniature Japanese woman (known as a ‘koonago’).  There are differences in the shrinking process as to whether the woman’s clothes shrink along with the body or whether the woman shrinks and the clothes remain the same size (causing her to be suddenly naked).

There are those that like to help the women (so the SW fan becomes a ‘gentle giant’) but there are those who do the opposite and want to hurt the shrunken woman. Here, there are crossovers with other sexually paraphilic behaviours such as sadism and masochism (including verbal and sexual humiliation). For instance, some male microphilic fantasies involve sexual violence against shrunken women who they hold as a captive and/or prisoner. Here, the microphiles may also be sexually aroused by the fact that the shrunken women may be in a distressed psychological state (e.g., scared, frightened, horrified, in shock, etc.) as a result of being miniaturized. There also appear to be crossovers with those people who are into transformation fetishes (which I covered in a previous blog).

There is very little written – even anecdotally – about the psychology behind microphilia. The Minimizer gave his own personal insight and claimed:

“A psychologist would tell you that a fantasy about shrinking women down to tiny size suggests some kind of subconscious hatred of women or a desire to dominate them. This may be true, I wouldn’t know…It’s unfair to generalize in this way, of course, because not everyone has the same SW fantasy. While some would indeed enjoy humiliating a tiny woman in a variety of nasty ways, just as many would see a miniature girl as something to be protected and taken care of, and would do anything they could to help one if they found one. Does that show a desire for domination? I doubt it.

 It’s really not fair to psychoanalyze a SW fan anyway. Shrinking is not something that can happen in real life”.

Until there is some empirical research undertaken, we can only speculate as to the psychological motivations underlying microphilia. Given that microphilia and macrophilia appear to be the psychological and behavioural opposites of one another (or at either end of the same continuum), it’s easy to speculate that if macrophiles’ enjoy the behaviour for it’s dominating aspects, then microphiles will enjoy the behaviour for it’s submissive aspects.

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

Further reading

The Minimizer (2012). What’s this SW thing, anyway? Located at: http://www.the-minimizer.com/

Wikifur (2012). Microphilia. Located at: http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Microphilia