Packed punch: A very brief look at “gastergastrizophilia”

One of the weirdest sounding sexual paraphilias that I have come across is gastergastrizophilia in which individuals allegedly derive sexual pleasure and arousal from bellypunching. I use the word ‘allegedly’ as I have never seen this sexual paraphilia listed in any reputable academic source (and it certainly does not appear in either Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices or Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices). The lengthiest article on that I have come across on gastergastrizophilia is on the Full Wiki website. The article claims that:

“Bellypunchers, as they are known, derive erotic and/or aesthetic pleasure from the sight of and sensation associated with a woman physically struck in the stomach usually with a bare fist. The specifics associated with this paraphilia vary considerably, sometimes with the woman possessing a toned and muscular stomach, other with the woman possessing a soft and even chubby stomach. Often fetishists desire her to receive blows to the lower stomach specifically; other times, to the upper stomach. Often the woman is struck by other women, but many times the fetishists will fantasize about doing the beating themselves. With the rise of the internet, a wide variety of websites and online groups have risen which house related fiction, photos, stories, and videos, the latter either custom-made or copied from a variety of films and videos. The male-to-male variety of the fetish is frequently called gutpunching, or abspunching”

The fact that someone has written about sexual bellypunching in no way proves that the behaviour exists. In a previous blog I examined a hoax paraphilia called emysphilia (sexual arousal from turtles). In researching that blog, I came to the conclusion that the paraphilia simply didn’t exist as there was no evidence of any kind except the originally published article (plus the fact that the author later admitted it was a hoax). Sexual bellypunching as a fetish or paraphilia is something that I do not think can easily be so dismissed. I managed to collect a few first-hand accounts of sexual bellypunching (such as those at the online at the Dark Fetish website). For instance:

• Extract 1: “[I am a] masochist [and] let people thump me in my belly. Although it hurts (and it hurts like hell sometimes) the pain does give me an erotic buzz. BUT (and this is the other side of the coin) I do get to punch other women and that also gives me a buzz – it turns me on.
• Extract 2: “There is a difference between a ‘friendly’ (I use the word advisedly) punch up between two women (which might even end in sex) and a really heated contest where there maybe some prize, physical or emotional. Then it’s a pure pain contest… just to see which woman can take the most pain in her guts. In such contests there is a moment when having delivered a punch, I watch my opponent’s face crease in agony, watch her fight the pain, watch her desperately trying to keep her hands from going to her belly… hear her panting for breath as she tries to control the agony in her guts. Oh so delicious…it’s a real turn-on for me. The downside is that I have to take and absorb the punishment too. [However], that turns me on too!!”
• Extract 3: “My ex-boyfriend loved being punched in the belly. We both went to couples therapy and [this is] how the psychologist explained it to me…The physical flow-on effect of bellypunching is peptic reflux, which triggers the brain to release a sudden adrenalin rush to cope with the shock of (temporarily) depriving the brain of oxygen. This adrenalin rush can be experienced as sexual arousal for those with a fetish complex for feeling ‘subverted’ or ‘abused’”

Based on the research I did for this blog, it would appear that there used to be a Wikipedia entry on sexual bellypunching but it was removed back in 2006. Some people claimed that the information provided in the original webpage was unable to be verified, and that it might even have been made up by the person who created the original Wikipedia entry. As one person noted in the Wikipedia discussion, the original author of the bellypunching article had:

“…added a bunch of links, but they consist of Yahoo! groups, personal websites, and a couple [of] porn sites which themselves are non-notable. None of these are reliable sources, none of them help with the fact that this article still violates Wikipedia’s verifiability. Unverifiable content can’t stay on Wikipedia, no matter how much some people might like said content”.

Comments were also made along the lines that Wikipedia does not need to have a separate page for every single obscure fetish. Personally, I don’t see this as an argument for not having a Wikipedia entry. However, the original author of the page countered by saying:

“It’s not about liking (or in your case, disliking) [the bellpunching] entry, but about showing diligence in mapping out within Wikipedia all these various concepts that exist in the world. Some concepts are better cited than others, it’s true. However that doesn’t mean that some things, which are perhaps more ephemeral, or which came into their own with the rise of the internet, can’t be listed…I suggest that if one can prove that a lot of people are involved in a concept, and that this concept exists as such, then the concept must surely merit some inclusion, even if that inclusion is limited only to what one can source…I have shown that thousands of people have taken it upon themselves to join public groups around this [bellypunching] fetish; and found any number of websites, most which have been around for years, creating a sort of community…It would be a mistake to make an article called bellypunching videos on the basis of the fact of such videos existing, because that would ignore the evident existence of the concept of the fetish”.

I have to admit that having done my own search on the internet, I can certainly vouch for the fact that there are hundreds of sexual bellypunching videos available online (e.g., websites such as Belly Punching Fetish, Heroine Movies, and Teen Bellypunch – please be warned that these are sexually explicit sites), and there are online discussion groups that discuss bellypunching as a sexual preference and/or sexual fetish. Personally, I think there’s enough to suggest that the activity exists and that there is no reason why a separate Wikipedia page should not exist. The fact that sexual bellypunching videos are for sale online suggests there is a market for it. I also came across some Japanese anime that featured sexual bellypunching (along with anecdotal evidence that bellypunching is part of Japanese sexual culture). However, I am the first to admit that such videos might appeal to sadists and masochists who are simply sexually turned on by the giving or receiving of pain (rather than being sexually aroused by bellypunching per se. The author of the original Wikipedia entry on sexual bellypunching then goes on to say:

“If [someone] starts a blog on any obscure fetish, it can’t be included [on Wikipedia]; but if 30 or 40 different organizations and people start websites, both personal websites and business websites, combined with free public groups that require membership (membership to which groups as I’ve stated reaches the thousands) I suggest that a certain minimum has been reached to make it a bona fide concept that some people hold…If you really believe that only things that show up in journals are worthy of existence in Wikipedia, I think Wikipedia will be much the poorer for it. It seems unreasonable to ignore the existence of something that is obvious and evident, from the links I’ve found (which were incidentally only a small percentage)”.

My guess is that the original article on sexual bellypunching was removed because the evidence base did not fulfil Wikipedia’s minimum evidence threshold. As the Wikipedia page on verifiability points out:

“Posts to bulletin boards, Usenet, and wikis, or messages left on blogs, should not be used as primary or secondary sources. This is in part because we have no way of knowing who has written or posted them, and in part because there is no editorial oversight or third-party fact-checking…The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth”.

Another contributor to the debate on whether sexual bellypunching should have its own Wikipedia entry shares my own view on this topic and stated:

“Our inability to find gastergastrizophilia on the net neither proves nor disproves anything – detailed texts on sexual paraphilia aren’t left around laying open on the net, and a mild amount of Googling for ‘erotic punching’, ‘belly punishment’ or ‘rough body play”’… will show that the practice is neither ‘unlikely’ nor even uncommon. Some of it is obviously sex play with a consenting partner; some is not so consensual, and there is a shaded continuum…Even in this supposedly liberated age, nobody has any real numbers, in part because the participants themselves don’t know where the line actually divides consent and abuse. I think it’s an important topic, and a research failure isn’t a good reason to have no article in this instance”

The one thing that is made up is the name given to describe the love of sexual bellypunching (‘gastergastrizophilia’). The author if the original Wikipedia article (who goes by the pseudonym ‘Brokerthebank’) wrote that:

“I made up the word gastergastrizophilia, since I’ve studied classical languages a lot (in this case Greek) and it seemed like the appropriate move to put this article in the list of sexual paraphilias on such a page. Maybe I should have not done that; in any case bellypunching still is a known term”.

However, as regular readers of my blog will know, I too have coined the names of at least three sexual paraphilias (porciniphilia – sexual arousal from pigs, epiplophilia, sexual arousal from furniture, and glossophilia – sexual arousal from tongues) so I can’t really complain if someone also created the name of a sexual paraphilia based on their own anecdotal observations.

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.

The Full Wiki (2013). Bellypunching. Located at: http://www.thefullwiki.org/Bellypunching

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

A step too far: Crush fetishism and ‘animal torture porn’ (revisited)

In previous blogs, I have examined both crush fetishism and zoosadism. A crush fetish is a sexual fetish in which an individual derives sexual arousal from watching (or fantasizing about) someone of the opposite sex crushing items (e.g., toys, cigarettes, mobile phones, laptops), food (e.g., fruit), and (in extreme cases) small animals and insects, and/or being stepped on, sat upon, and/or crushed on by a person. Zoosadism refers to the pleasure – often sexual – that individuals attain by causing sadistic cruelty to animals. These bizarre and (in some cases) depraved behaviours recently made the headlines in America following the arrests of women for appearing in an ‘animal torture porn’ video.

In the first case, 28-year old Sara Zamora, a woman from Florida (USA) was arrested following her appearance in a zoosadistic fetish video entitled ‘SOS Barn’. According to various newspaper reports, Zamora is seen engaged in various sexual acts while crushing and killing rabbits (including ‘karate’ chopping their legs) and decapitating chickens. According to a report in the Miami Herald Newspaper the video was made purely for the “sexual gratification of its viewers”. The Herald report alleges that:

“In one clip of ‘SOS Barn’, Miami-Dade police say, Zamora gropes a man’s genitals with her left hand while ‘repeatedly cutting a chicken’s neck using hedge clippers with her right.’ In others, she posed ‘in a sexy outfit’ after hacking off the head of another screaming bird, or she beat chickens to death with a wooden stick…’It’s certainly horrifying. I mean these are sadistic people inflicting gruesome suffering on innocent and vulnerable and helpless animals’ said [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’] Cruelty Casework Director Stephanie Bell…So-called ‘crush’ animal torture videos aren’t new and have been the target of past legal crackdowns. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law that outlawed depictions of animals being ‘intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed’, saying it was too broad and violated the right to free speech”.

The film was made at the house of (and presumably by) Adam Redford. Unfortunately, no-one knows exactly when the video was made and therefore “the statute of limitations may have expired”.

Not long after the arrest of Zamora, a second American woman – 29-year old Stephanie Hird from Arkansas (performing under her stage name ‘Megan Jones’) – was also arrested for her role in the ‘SOS Barn’ video. Described by the New York Daily Times as an “animal snuff film starlet”, Hird allegedly shot animals with an air rifle while tied down or being crushed (at least according to court documents that the newspaper had managed to get hold of. According to her social media profiles, Hird’s sexual fetishes also including foot tickling and bondage, as well as being interested in various aspects of macrophilia and microphilia (which I have covered in previous blogs). The New York Daily News story also reported that:

“Hird also appeared in the [The Learning Channel] show ‘Strange Sex’ to help a man realize his dream of being with a giant woman. The episode uses special effects to make the woman appear as if she were several-hundred-feet tall and towering over cities before manhandling her victim. ‘I love being considered a giantess and a goddess’ a smiling Hird tells the camera behind the scenes of the show. ‘Guys love being overpowered. They like being controlled. They like, you know, a woman being in charge – like she should be”.

As I noted in my previous blogs, there has been little empirical research on either crush fetishism or zoosadism, and most academically published papers are case reports. Since I published my blog on crush fetishism, some of my readers will be aware of the case study I published on a man (that I gave the pseudonym of ‘Brad’) with eproctophilia (i.e., sexual arousal to flatulence) in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The reason I mention this is that one of the other sexual fetishes that Brad also had was crush fetishism. Brad claimed he had this fetish “since birth” and went on to explain further:

“[I have another fetish that] am not proud of, but it exists and may help your study. I have a crush fetish, which is essentially arousal from seeing people step on objects or insects. This particular one has had a lot of bad publicity. As for this one, I can’t tell you where it originated. I remember rubbing myself in my crib as a baby to such thoughts, leading me to believe I may have literally been born with it. I could have been no older than 2½ years old. Keep in mind, these are very primal memories which are mostly a blur. All I recall is that around the time of those memories, I would also rub myself to the thought of someone stepping on an insect, or sometimes a machine made to crush up children like myself. Come to think of it, that last one may have been caused by seeing an apple cider press as a toddler. I also seem to recall that, and being afraid of it because of how it ‘hurt’ the apples”.

I also asked Brad if he thought there was any connection between his crush fetish and his eproctophilia. He responded that if there was any connection, it concerned “the idea of the duality” in that he would not expect to see a woman fart in front of him and similarly, he would not expect a woman to kill an insect in front of him for no real reason. In relation to his crush fetish, he also reported:

“It’s my oldest fetish with no known origin, and I like it for about the same reason as eproctophilia. Maybe that I also disliked seeing people kill bugs as a kid, while also finding it arousing. I was quite the pacifist. Also, when I first discovered ejaculation, I made the connection that ejaculating was somewhat like when a bug is stepped on. I thought about a bug squirting under pressure and then I would do the same. May or may not be relevant, but it was a connection I made as a kid”.

While this is only a small insight into the mind of a crush fetishist, the scientific value of case studies includes their utility in highlighting rare phenomena as well as their role in the generation of new research questions and hypotheses (observations made by Dr. Terry Vasey and Dr. Paul Vasey in a case study of feederism in 2011 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior [ASB]). The case I presented in my own ASB paper hopefully fulfils these values. Clearly, this is just one case study and Brad is unlikely to be representative of the entire eproctophile and/or crush fetish community. Further research is needed to assess the extent to which the case study I reported is representative of eproctophiles and/or crush fetishists more generally, and whether the etiological and developmental pathways are more complex than I initially described in my case study account. I also noted at the end of my paper that Brad “highlights the need for further research into crush fetishism as there are no empirical data on this type of fetish”.

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

Further reading

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

Biles, J. (2004). I, insect, or Bataille and the crush freaks. Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts, 7(1), 115-131.

Huffington Post (2014). Woman tortured, killed animals while filming Brutal Fetish Sex Video: Cops. April 4. Located at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/06/woman-tortured-animals-fetish-video_n_5100535.html

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

Intentious (2011). Rabbit crushing outrage – Animal snuff film offends. December 9. Located at: http://intentious.com/2011/12/09/rabbit-crushing-outrage-animal-snuff-film-offends/

Kemp, J. (2014). Second fetish model busted in Miami for role in sickening animal torture porn video. New York Daily News, April 17. Located at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/fetish-model-busted-miami-role-animal-torture-porn-article-1.1759487

Miami Herald (2014). Miami woman charged with role in animal torture sex fetish porn video. April 4. Located at: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/04/4040007/miami-woman-charged-with-role.html

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

In visible touch: Does ‘teledildonics’ have a future?

“Online sexual activities no longer are restricted to text, pictures, videos, webcams, and audio. Nowadays, while still in its infancy, we have teledildonics. Teledildonics is essentially a virtual reality application that allows individuals to have sex interactively with people miles away. At present, mobile phones can call up and activate internally worn vibrators. Futurists have dreamed up many other potential ways that technology can be used to pleasure people. In the future, we expect that full body suits will exist that will be able to stimulate all five senses” (Whitty & Fisher, 2008).

“Virtual Reality, or interactive graphical simulations, has been clearly demarcated by the owners of the means of production as an almost exclusively masculine enclave. Almost all applications (at least those that are marketable) respond to specifically male needs, be they physical, emotional, recreational, technical, military or sexual. As with most current Internet commercial activity, female exploitative, male-targeting pornography (‘phallocratic’ applications) will dwarf other applications by the sheer volume of activity. “Teledildonics” (from dildo: artificial penis) will provide unimagined, unlimited and customisable sexual services to male clients” (Walberg, 2006).

“[Male clients will be able to] wriggle into a condom-tight body suit embedded with thousands of miniature electronic sensors, computer controlled to simulate the feel of any object from rubber to skin. Suitably protected participants could then interface sexually with any partner, real, imaginary, or re-created” (McKie, 1994)

“[Teledildonics is] the virtual-reality technology that may one day allow people wearing special bodysuits, headgear and gloves to engage in tactile sexual relations from separate, remote locations via computers connected to phone lines” (Chicago Tribune, 1993).

“Futurologists are predicting drugs which sort out every kind of sexual malfunction and switch libido on and off like a light, ‘teledildos’ operated by computer for those who like to be probed from afar and underwear packed with sensors for couples bored with the limitations of current video games” (Twinn, 2007).

As these opening quotes demonstrate, visions of sex in the future are commonplace and often mention ‘teledildonics’. According to Wikipedia, the term ‘teledildonics’ was coined by hypertext inventor Ted Nelson in his 1974 self-published book Computer Lib/Dream Machines. In his book, Nelson hypothetically described a computer system that could translate sound waves into tactile sensations that could be affected in or on the body via user-operated stimulator device (i.e., a wired sensor system that was capable of converting sound into tactile sensations). However, a short article written by Charles Platt describes a teledildonic hardware device (but does not use the term itself):

“Many men display more affection for their cars than their wives; perhaps the ultimate love-object could be a plastic thing, with many alternative orifices, offering various tactile qualities, shapes and depths…The idea of something like a long sausage, vibrating softly, full of warm treacle, has certain attractions as a sexual toy”.

More recently, it was Howard Rheingold’s essay ‘Teledildonics: Reach Out and Touch Someone’ in a 1990 issue of the cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000 that popularized the concept and is viewed by many as a ‘must read’ for anyone (as Jane Fader asserts) “interested in the intersection of sex and technology, social networks and identity, or history of thought”. I first came across the word in 1993 when I appeared on a Channel 4 television documentary talking about video game sexploitation (in fact, Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices defines ‘teledildonics’ as “sexual arousal from computer sex games”). The online Urban Dictionary defines it as the “computer-mediated sexual interaction between the [virtual reality] presences of two humans”. Alternatively, Wikipedia claims that teledildonics refers to:

“…electronic sex toys that can be controlled by a computer to reach orgasm. Promoters of these devices have claimed since the 1980s they are the ‘next big thing’ in cybersex technology. ‘Teledildonics’ can also refer to the integration of telepresence with sex that these toys make possible. In its original conception, this technology was to have been used for remote sex (or, at least, remote mutual masturbation) where the physical sensations of touch could be transmitted over a data link between the participants. Sex toys that can be manipulated remotely by another party are currently coming onto the market”.

For Rob Baedeker, author of the article ‘Virtual Sex’ on the Web MD website, teledildonics (or cyberdildonics as he also calls it) simply relates to any sex toy that can be controlled via a computer. To give an example, Baedeker describes a wireless vibrator called the ‘Sinulator’ that works via an online application controlled by somebody other than the person that physically has the vibrator. He also describes the ‘Interactive Fleshlight’ corollary – “a penis sleeve for men that transmits in-and-out action into vibrations for the Sinulator on the other end”. For his article, Baedeker interviewed Regina Lynn, author of Sexual Revolution 2.0 who in relation to teledildonics was quoted as saying:

“It’s not sex but it is sex I don’t like the phrase ‘virtual sex’ because it trivializes the experience. There are many ways to share sex with people in virtual spaces, and you still have to communicate to the other person what you like and don’t like. It’s such a mental and emotional experience. That’s part of what turns people on”.

However, now that we have Skype where couples can have mutual masturbation sessions with each other real-time and face-to-face, it does beg the question whether teledildonics has a future. It will ultimately come down to whether individuals want and/or prefer tactile over visual cues from their sexual partner. As Antal Haans and Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn note in a 2009 conference paper they wrote on telepresence:

“Touching is an important part of our social interaction repertoire. Despite the significance of touch, current communication devices rely predominantly on vision and hearing. In recent years, however, several designers and researchers have developed prototypes that allow for mediated social touch; enabling people to touch each other over a distance by means of haptic and tactile feedback technology…Designers of such systems conjecture that the addition of a haptic or tactile communication channel will enrich mediated interactions, and generally refer to the symbolic and intrinsic (e.g., recovery from stress) functions of social touch, as well as to the supposed intimate nature of addressing the skin…Interestingly, in the domain of internet-based adult toys there are several commercial systems available that take advantage of combining tactile stimulation with visual feedback”.

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

Further reading

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

Baedeker, R. (2009). Everything you’ve been afraid to ask about sex in cyberspace. Web MD. Located at: http://www.webmd.com/men/features/virtual-sex

Cybersex (2014). Teledildonics. Located at: http://cybersex.wikispaces.com/Teledildonics

Castronova, E. (2009). Fertility and virtual reality. Washington & Lee Law Review, 66, 1085-1126.

Fader, J. (2010). ‘Teledildonics’ by Howard Rheingold. September 15. Located at: http://janefader.com/teledildonics-by-howard-rheingold-mondo-2000-1990/

Haans, A., & IJsselsteijn, W. A. (2009). I’m always Touched by Your Presence, Dear”: Combining mediated social touch with morphologically correct visual feedback. Proceedings of Presence 2009.

McKie, D. (1994). Cybersex, Lies and Computer Games. In Green, L. (Ed.), Framing Technology. NSW: Allen & Unwin.

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

Walberg, S. (2006). The ideological and cultural processes that represent new communications technologies as’ masculine’. Located at: http://serge.walberg.tripod.com/GenderEssay.pdf

Whitty, M.T., & Fisher, W.A. (2008). The sexy side of the internet: An examination of sexual activities and materials in cyberspace. In A. Barak (Ed.), Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace: Theory, Research, Applications (pp. 185-208). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wikipedia (2014). Teledildonics. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics

Octopussy: The strange world of animated pornography and ‘tentacle erotica’

In a previous blog, I examined toonophilia (i.e., a sexual paraphilia in which individuals are sexually and/or emotionally attracted to cartoon characters). I also mentioned in the same blog that some toonophiles are very specific in regard to what they find erotic and that one particular sub-type of tooniphilia involves those individuals who find Japanese ‘anime’ characters particularly erotic. While researching that blog, I came across the lecture notes of an unnamed academic (posted by one of his/her students) that I found interesting (although I don’t know what the primary sources for the notes were). I’m aware that Japanese comics are known as ‘manga’ and that cartoon pornography is highly prevalent (inside and outside of Japan) and is known as ‘hentai’ (but I can’t claim to have known much else before researching this blog).

“Enthusiasts [of anime/Hentai/Manga] are technically known as otaku (Japanese for anime fan), and most of these cartoons have a hardcore, bondage, or rubber/latex flavor. Erotic art has been around, of course, since antiquity, but anime and hentai are more like the adult versions of ‘new animation’ cartoons (like Sailor Moon). The Japanese government requires censorship (blotting out) of genitalia in any picture showing penetration (with the toon showing that ‘look’ of painful enjoyment), but easily downloadable programs like G-mask can remove the censorship masking. Other cartoon images range from Betty Boop, Disney, the Flintsones, and Jetsons to highly erotic fantasy artwork (sometimes featuring penetration by laboratory devices, aliens, or cephalopod squids). Manga art is the most popular American variant, coming from the underground comix culture of R. Crumb and followers. The mutant alien (with tentacles) space theme is probably the most popular, followed by a vegetation or animal fetish, and then only about 30% thoroughly enjoy that degrading ’look’ on the victim’s face. A higher percentage enjoys something of the same ‘look’ in hardcore cumshot photos”.

As I said, I have no idea where the claims made originate (particularly the percentages given), but they appear to have good face validity based on my own anecdotal reading of the popular literature that I have tracked down online. Unsurprisingly, the most popular consumers of hentai are men. The Wikipedia entry on hentai also adds that:

“Eroge games [erotoc games] in particular combine three favored media, cartoons, pornography and gaming into an experience. The hentai genre engages a wide audience that expands yearly, with that audience desiring better quality and storylines, or works which push the creative envelope. The unusual and extreme depictions in hentai is not about perversion so much as it is an example of the profit-oriented industry. Normal sexual situations don’t sell as well as the more unusual situations, such as depicting sex at schools or bondage. Dr. Megha Hazuria Gorem, a clinical psychologist says, ‘Because toons are a kind of final fantasy, you can make the person look the way you want him or her to look. Every fetish can be fulfilled.’ Dr. Narayan Reddy a sexologist, commented on the eroge games, ‘Animators make new games because there is a demand for them, and because they depict things that the gamers do not have the courage to do in real life, or that might just be illegal, these games are an outlet for suppressed desire’”.

Another aspect of hentai that I kept coming across was ‘tentacle porn’ and ‘tentacle rape’ (or ‘shokushu goukan’ as it is known as in Japan) that a number of articles I read says it dates back to the eighteenth century although the more recent tentacle rape genre is generally attributed to Urotsukidoji, manga created by controversial erotic cartoonist Toshio Maeda who emphasized the elements of sexual assault. Maeda claims to have introduced tentacle porn as a way to circumvent Japan’s very strict censorship laws. These laws didn’t allow the depiction of penises but at the time (in 1986) didn’t forbid sexual penetration by anything else (such as tentacles or robotic appendages). In an online article on “depraved fetishes that are older than you think”, the author Nathan Reed reported that:

“For men, the [tentacle rape] fetish appeals to those who enjoy seeing women humiliated and subjugated by something that isn’t even human. While [Toshio] Maeda may have created the modern tentacle rape, he wasn’t the inventor – not even close. Maeda was preceded by Katsushika Hokusai, an artist from the late 18th and early 19th century. Hokusai was the artist of the ‘Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji’ an internationally recognized series of prints that earned him fame both locally and globally…Hokusai’s ‘The Dream Of The Fisherman’s Wife’ is speculated to be the first instance of tentacle erotica…[Also] check out ‘Tentacles of Desire: The Man Who Loved Cephalopods’. Contained within is the story of Joshua Handley, an English artist in the late 19th century whose travels to Japan resulted in an obsession with tentacle erotica. Handley attempted multiple times to publish some of it in England, even coming up with some of his own to add to the table. People were appalled – not by the tentacles, but at the notion that the women in the stories were actually enjoying themselves, because for some reason rape would make it much less disgusting”.

A 2001 paper by Dr. Danielle Talerico in the academic journal Impressions showed argued that although Western audiences have usually viewed Hokusai’s painting as rape, “Japanese audiences of the Edo period would have associated it with consensual sex”. This is also echoed in the Wikipedia entry that claims ‘tentacle erotica’ can be of a consensual nature “but frequently has elements of non-consensual sex”. It also notes that it has become much more popular outside of Japan and Asia and has found an audience among people in both Europe and the US but “still remains a small, fetish-oriented part of the adult film industry. While most tentacle erotica is animated, there are also a smaller number of live-action movies featuring this theme”.

Some academics believe that tentacle rape – even in animated form is a step too far. For instance, a 2004 book chapter by Dr. J.P. Dahlquist, and Dr. L.G. Vigilant asserts that:

“The experience of hentai is morally distancing. Tentacle hentai offers the telegenetic signs of the most perverse and debased sexualities. It opens for fantastic examination a sexuality that transgresses all ‘simulated’ moralities of the ‘real’ world, where tentacle sex between nubile girl-women and cloned boy-men monsters are the order of the day – a monstrous sex-feast of the most abnormal acts: pedophilic bestiality, sex with machines, sex with cyborgs, sex with dangerous protruding tentacles, and, of course, an endless stream of the most debasing, brutal, and humiliating rape images”.

Whether animated pornography is less ‘harmful’ than non-animated pornography is something I will leave to others more knowledgeable than me to debate. However, there is clearly a market for hentai more generally, and tentacle porn more specifically as evidenced by those who sell it commercially. The whole area raises interesting moral questions which I hope to return to in a future blog.

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.

Absolute Astronomy (2013). Tentacle rape. Located at: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Tentacle_rape

Dahlquist, J.P., & Vigilant, L.G. (2004). Way better than real: Manga sex to tentacle hentai. In D.D. Waskul (Ed.), Net.sex: Readings on sex, pornography, and the Internet (pp. 91–103). New York: Peter Lang.

Ortega-Brena, Mariana (2009). Peek-a-boo, I see you: Watching Japanese hard-core animation. Sexuality and Culture, 13, 17–31.

Reed, N. (2010). 6 Depraved Sexual Fetishes That Are Older Than You Think. Cracked.com, March 30. Located at: http://www.cracked.com/article_18472_6-depraved-sexual-fetishes-that-are-older-than-you-think.html

Talerico, D. (2001). Interpreting sexual imagery in Japanese prints: A fresh approach to Hokusai’s Diver and Two Octopi. Impressions: The Journal of the Ukiyo-e Society of America, 23, 24-42.

Wikipedia (2013). Hentai. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentai

Wikipedia (2013). Manga. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga

Wikipedia (2013). Tentacle erotica. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle_erotica

Wikipedia (2013). Urotsukidoji. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urotsukidōji