Royal male: A brief look at queening fetishes

While researching a previous blog on squashing fetishes I came across an online account from a dominatrix talking about ‘queening’ fetishes. According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, queening is a BDSM practice in where one sexual partner sits on or over another person’s face “typically to allow oral-genital or oral anal contact, or to practice ass worship or body worship”. In the book’s glossary of sexual terms, Dr. Aggrawal simply defines queening as “sitting on the side of a person’s face as a form of bondage”. A 2005 book chapter by Dr Brenda Love (in Russ Kick’s Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong) examined some of the strangest sexual behaviours from around the world and included a short section on queening. She wrote:

“The term queening refers to the European practice of a dominant female using a man’s head as her throne. The woman sits in one of several positions, either on the side of the man’s head or so that his nose is near her anus with his eyes covered by her genitals. The object of queening is bondage or breath control, not cunnilingus. The man may wear supplemental restraints on the wrists and ankles. A slightly comparable American sex scene is where a stripper completely disrobes and stands over a sitting male with his head titled back so that her genitals are only a couple of inches above his face. She stays in this position, moving her pelvis to the music for about five minutes. The male is not permitted to touch her in any manner during this exhibition”.

According to the Wikipedia entry on ‘facesitting’, within a sadomasochistic and dominance/submission context, the practice can be an “especially intense form of erotic humiliation”. The article also claims the practice is commonplace among sadomasochists. Although this would appear to have good face validity, I have yet to come across an empirical piece of research that either confirms or disconfirms this. The article differentiates facesitting from ‘smothering’ (i.e., the complete obstruction of the airways for sexual purposes) because the person being sat is not totally deprived of oxygen. The article also claims:

“The full-weight body-pressure, moisture, sex odors and darkness can be perceived as powerful sexual attractions or compulsions. The person sat upon may be in bondage, sexually submissive, or simply held down by the body-weight of the other person. Sometimes special furniture is used, such as a ‘queening stool’ or ‘smotherbox’. A queening stool is a low seat which fits over the submissive’s face and contains an opening to allow oral-genital and/or oral-anal stimulation of the domme while seated. In modern BDSM vernacular, the queening stool allows open access to the crotch while seated…The queening stool is also related to a ‘smotherbox’ which also allows the person under the seat to be locked in place, restrained by the neck as in a set of stocks”

This description also suggests there may be overlaps between queening and other sexual paraphilias and fetishes such as squashing fetishes, amaurophilia (where individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal by a partner who is blind or unable to see due to artificial means such as being blindfolded or having sex in total darkness), and osmophilia (where individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal caused by bodily odours such as sweat and urine).

An online article about queening on the Toilet Duck website (that ‘celebrates and questions watersports and toilet games’) begins by asserting that defining the act of queening is “difficult to say the least without leaving readers wondering why”.  Unlike the Wikipedia article, it does not differentiate between facesitting and smothering:

“[Queening is a] very erotic act in which a woman sits on a man’s face and is satisfied sexually while dominating her man and the man is incredibly turned on by the act as well…Also referred to as face sitting or smothering, queening is most often accomplished by a dominant woman sitting on her submissive man’s or slave’s face and deriving sexual pleasure by riding his face or forcing him to lick, suck, bite, or orally massage his domme’s vaginal and anal area until she climaxes. During a queening session a submissive experiences the sensation of his mistress’s weight on his face as she squats on top of his face. The smell of her, the moistness, and the slow erotic motion as she moves around on his face to gain pleasure from her submissive mixed with the urgency to breathe is what turns the sub on…Sometimes queening is accompanied by the infliction of pain, verbal humiliation, or water sports (the act of urinating on a sexual partner) depending on the couple and how deep into the BDSM scene they are into. Nipple twisting or flogging are also great additions to smothering as is a little cock and ball torture. However, Queening is most often used as a form of reward for submissives that have been very good”.

Although most of the claims made here are unsubstantiated empirically, the Toilet Duck article is at least written by proponents who actually engage in the practices they write about. This extract also suggests there are yet more overlaps with other sexual paraphilias including urophilia, masochism, and hypoxyphilia.

In my research for this blog I came across the Informed Consent website (“The UK’s BDSM website”) which highlighted queening as its ‘fetish of the week’ back in September 2010. As a consequence, it featured people writing about their queening experiences. I have collated a few extracts here to provide a flavour of what people enjoy about queening from a personal standpoint:

• Extract 1: “I practice [queening] and regard it more in [an orally erotic] way than as a means of breath play. Although I know for some the oral element doesn’t feature at all. For me, the breath play aspect is a fairly insignificant part of it”
• Extract 2: “I love all aspects of it. The sheer enjoyment of someone dominating me by pushing their body down on my face; the oral sex; the worshipping of an anus; the smells and tastes; the inability to control my breathing; being pushed right to the edge, gasping for the slightest bit of air. I love it when Mistress losses herself ‘in the moment’ so much that she forgets about me, and I literally have to protect my own breathing/life”
• Extract 3: “It’s one of my favourites, yet very rarely practiced…it encompasses so much…from total control to total intimacy”
• Extract 4: “Personally, I love [queening] and just can’t get enough of it. I seem to never get bored of it. The ultimate for me is for Mistress to sit on my face and conduct some nipple torture or candle wax on my chest. I think this is proper pain and pleasure mixed up perfectly”

The only other article of any length I have come across on queening is one on the Kinky Britain website. Their main take on queening is that it is a form of body worship but also sees the behaviour has having other sexual attractions including the darkness, the weight pressure, the smells, and the wetness (echoing some of the aspects outlined above). The article claims that it is not only engaged in by dominant women and submissive men, but also by “vanilla couples who use this highly-enjoyable position for woman-superior cunnilingus”. Like the Wikipedia article, smothering and queening are viewed as two different forms of sexual activity. The anonymous author notes:

“Smothering is NOT like regular cunnilingus. In fact, at times the guys can’t even lick because they’re just trying to inhale a breath of fresh air. Sure, that overpowering smell of [the vagina] is great, but oxygen is what they really want at times. Facesitting is very erotic in essence and may be practiced by non-BDSM (vanilla) couples for sexual pleasure. However, when applied in the context of female domination it symbolizes the Mistress superiority over the sub. There is a slight difference between facesitting to smothering or queening, which is associated with the deprivation of air, yet in the BDSM world these terms are often regarded as one”.

The other aspect to this article that is not mentioned in any others I have read concerns the type of submissive man (i.e., ‘the slave’) that engages in queening. The article claims it is the woman who chooses who the submissive male is, and it appears there is no commonality amongst the type of man who participate. The article claims (and I have no empirical evidence to counter them) that:

“She may wish to have a wimpish male twit under her. She may find more delight in subduing a macho strong male. She may have a cuckolded husband to humiliate, taunt and sit on. Some women like to have a mouth-dildo attached to their slave’s head, sticking up from his open mouth as a rideable accessory. This provides pleasant, full, vaginal passage orgasms, but prevents sucking and licking by the male victim. Other women blindfold their prone slaves, thus deleting any possible visual pleasure they might obtain. A few cruel ladies inevitably urinate on to his face after having orgasmed. Others enjoy demanding mouth service right after enjoying satisfactory adultery with a lover, thus making the victim more humiliated. Most queening ladies humiliate, taunt, torment, degrade and tease their victims before and after this enforced cunnilingus”.

The bottom line (no pun intended) about queening fetishes is that almost all the information we have appears to have been written by those who actually engage in the practice and that there is nothing written academically except passing references in academic books on unusual sexual practices. There is also the question of whether those who engage in the behaviour view it as fetishistic, and whether academics such as myself would class the behaviour as a fetish. Based on what I have read, queening appears to be an adjunct to other types of sexually paraphilic behaviour such as sexual masochism rather than a stand alone fetish although for some people, it may well be a genuine fetishistic sexual activity.

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.

Charland, V. (2010). Fetish furniture in art (queening chairs, bondage, facestting, etc.). Cuckold Journal, November 27. Located at: http://cuckold-journal-wet-options.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/fetish-furniture-in-art-queening-chairs.html

Kinky Britain (2010). Questions and answers about facestiing/queening. August 25. Located at: http://kinkybritain.co.uk/kinky/2010questions-answers-about-facesitting-queening

Love, B. (2005). Cat-fighting, eye-licking, head-sitting and statue-screwing. In R. Kick (Ed.), Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong (pp.122-129).  New York: The Disinformation Company.

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

McGuire, C. (1989). Perfect Victim. New York: Dell.

Murray, T. (1989). The Language of Sadomasochism. Westport: Greenwood Press.

The Toilet Duck (2011). Queening – Can this be enjoyable for both parties? August 7. Located at: http://thetoiletduck.com/20/queening-can-this-be-enjoyable-for-both-parties/

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

Snoozing personality: The strange case of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ paraphilia

Just recently (and quite by accident while I was doing some research into fingernail fetishes – the topic of an upcoming blog) I came across a case study of an allegedly unique sexual paraphilia called ‘Sleeping Beauty’ paraphilia. The paper was by Dr. Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli and three colleagues, and published in a 2010 issue of the journal Medical Science Monitor. The case involved a 34-year old married man who was admitted to a psychiatric unit in February 2007 following a violent physical attack on his wife. The marriage had been failing for a number of years because of the man’s paraphilic actions in which his wife was an unwilling participant.

The man’s sexual focus was arousal from seeing women sleeping. This as I have written about in a previous blog on somnophilia is not unheard of. (Somnophilia is a sexual paraphilia in which sexual arousal is derived from intruding on, caressing, and/or fondling someone – typically a stranger – while they are asleep without force or violence.) However, where the paraphilia differed from ‘classic’ somnophilia was that the man liked to look after the woman’s hands and nails while they were asleep (this helps explain why I came across the case while researching into fingernail fetishism). The man also had an idealized routine and would always start with the women’s right hand before moving on to the left. Over the years of the marriage, the urge to control his paraphilic interest worsened. At the start of his marriage he used to give his wife sleeping pills that she consented to take. However, the wife eventually refused to take the medication given by her husband. Consequently, the man began to surreptitiously administer sleeping pills (the benzodiazepine Bromaezepam) to his wife without her knowledge. In 2006, the man’s wife discovered what her husband had been doing and the relationship deteriorated even further. The authors wrote that:

“Because of the extremely powerful obsession with sleeping women and painting their nails, the patient disguised himself with a latex mask and attacked his wife, as she returned from work, with an Olerosin Capsicum (OC) spray, to anaesthetize her. During this episode, his wife succeeded in taking off his mask, escaped and called the police who brought him to the psychiatric emergencies”.

Following a psychiatric assessment that was deemed “normal” the man revealed that when he was 10 years old he had an incident of head trauma that resulted in a four-day long coma. He subsequently received various neurological evaluations, including neuroimaging brain scans. The authors reported that:

“The cerebral MRI showed a moderate atrophy in the fronto-parietal region with a diffuse and severe white matter injury compatible with his previous head trauma. On a functional viewpoint, this brain network is known to sustain among others, the sense of self, body-image, and attention mechanisms. His neuropsychological exam was in line with this assumption. The patient was diagnosed with a moderate dysexecutive syndrome and a very specific body image disorder characterized by an incomplete mental image of his hands, mostly the right (i.e., personal representational hemineglect), as ascertained by his graphical representation of his body parts. The clinical hypothesis was that the paraphilia might be related to his post-traumatic disturbed body image and more specifically to the incomplete hands representation”.

The authors made reference to a number of studies that suggest paraphilic behaviour can appear following brain damage (see ‘Further reading’ below) and concluded that their case study highlighted “the potential link between paraphilia, deviant and aggressive sexual behaviour, neurological disturbance and self-representation…Presumably, the occurrence of head trauma leading to catatonia in adolescents might have played a critical role on the development of his sexual self and body image”.

A good critique of this particular case study was by The Neurocritic who wrote that:

“One puzzling aspect of this case is why the ‘Sleeping beauty paraphilia’ became uncontrollable only in adulthood, showing a progressive escalation during his marriage. This might be suggestive of a neurodegenerative disorder, but that was not part of his diagnosis. And I’m not sure why an old traumatic brain injury would have lead to ‘moderate’ atrophy in the fronto-parietal region. I might have expected more involvement of the orbitofrintal cortex, given the nature of the patient’s behavioral changes. However, many other examples of impulsive sexual offenses are even less obviously related to neurological status (e.g., after head injuries when the damage might not be visible on an MRI scan, and of course the population of offenders who have never sustained a TBI [traumatic brain injury]). Since the lesions were distributed and not focal, a final mystery is why the body image disturbance was confined to the right hand (implying a left hemisphere origin). This type of personal representational hemineglect (neglect for a mental representation of one side of the body) is most often associated with lesions in the right hemisphere”.

The Neurocritic also makes a point that I have raised in other blogs that I’ve written on various paraphilias concerning the issue of whether something is problematic if there is a willing participant to share the sexual urges. The Neurocritic concludes:

“What is considered acceptable can vary widely across cultures and subcultures (Bhugra et al, 2010) and across individuals. If the patient of Bianchi-Demicheli et al. found a partner willing to have her fingernails done while sedated with sleeping pills, perhaps the classification would change from paraphilic disorder to something that might be considered strange and paraphilic to most people, but causing no distress to the two willing participants”

Personally, I feel this paraphilic behaviour is just a sub-type of somnophilia or somnophilia overlapping with hand fetishism. However. Given the complete lack of case studies ion the clinical literature on somnophilia, who is to say that this case study is not representative of somnophiles more generally?

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

Further reading

Bianchi-Demicheli F, Rollini C, Lovblad K, & Ortigue S (2010). “Sleeping Beauty paraphilia”: Deviant desire in the context of bodily self-image disturbance in a patient with a fronto-parietal traumatic brain injury. Medical Science Monitor: International Medical Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research, 16(2), C15-C17.

Bhugra D, Popelyuk D, McMullen I. (2010). Paraphilias across cultures: Contexts and controversies. Journal of Sex Research, 47, 242-56.

Briken, P., Habermann, N., Berner, W. & Hill, A. (2005). The influence of brain abnormalities on psychosocial development, criminal history and paraphilias in sexual murders. Journal of Forensic Science, 50, 1204-1208.

Lehne G.K. (1994). Brain damage and paraphilia treated with medroxyprogesterone acetate. Sex and Disability, 10, 145–158.

Miller, B.L., Cummings, J.L,. McIntyre H et al (1986). Hypersexuality or altered sexual preference following brain injury. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 49, 867–873

The Neurocritic (2010). “Sleeping Beauty Paraphilia” and Body Image Disturbance After Brain Injury. April 11. Located at: http://neurocritic.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/sleeping-beauty-paraphilia-and-body.html

Better latex than never: A beginner’s guide to ‘rubberdolling’

In previous blogs I have looked at doll fetishism (i.e., individuals that derive sexual pleasure and arousal from dolls and doll-like objects) and the ‘reborn baby doll’ phenomenon (i.e., individuals who collect and look after liefelike baby dolls). Today’s blog examines the world of ‘rubberdolling’ – the practice of individuals dressing up head-to-toe as a rubber doll. As far as I am aware, there is no academic research on rubberdolling although there are clearly psychological and behavioural overlaps with other more academically researched areas including transvestic fetishism, rubber/latex fetishism, and sadomasochism. In fact, many people might view such activity as ‘extreme cross-dressing’ where men (but occasionally females) transform themselves into walking talking dolls, completely concealing their real identities. According to the Latex Wiki entry on rubberdolling:

“A doll (a.k.a. Rubber doll, rubberdoll, rubberdolly, v. dolling, v. rubberdolling) is a latex fetishist whose desire is to acquire the appearance of a doll, usually a female doll, through a mostly latex costume that completely covers the face and skin… A doll’s suit is often a catsuit, which might have been specifically designed to mimic a store mannequin or a blow-up doll. Common colours thus include approximations of skin tones, white and black (for a Heavy Rubber look)…For nude (a nude doll, that is) applications the suit may feature blow-up-doll-like openings with insertable pouches. Some manufacturers offer catsuits designed to look like a blow-up doll. These might include inflatable bosom, hips or other regions to enhance the visual effect of an artificial doll – or to give a male wearer the shape of a female”.

Rubberdolling is relatively new phenomenon that has come to the fetishistic fore over the last two decades. Most rubberdollers attribute the rise of rubberdolling to the work of German fetish photographer Peter Czernich who started the fetish magazines Marquis and Heavy Rubber. Rubberdollers are typically encased in latex rubber with exaggerated and accentuated Barbie-type female features (i.e., huge breasts, incredibly small waists, exaggerated thighs and hips, elongated fingernails, extra long eyelashes, bright and excessive make-up, etc.). Typically, the only areas of human flesh that remain uncovered are holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. According to an article on rubberdolling at the Rubber World Rendezvous website, there are four basic categories to which rubberdolling can apply:

• Submissive dolls: This is where individuals dress up as a rubber doll as part of a submissive role within a sadomasochistic relationship. Here the doll acts as a service submissive/slave and is utilized by others (usually the dominant partner) for their own sexual entertainment purposes. The dominant partner controls everything that the doll does and the costume often restricts the doll’s movements. The doll essentially becomes totally objectified and is at the total mercy of their dommes or mistresses. Here, rubberdolls may also be engaging in the behaviour as part of an encasement and/or rubber bondage fetish.
• Sissy dolls: This is where individuals dress up as a fetishistic ‘sissy’ rubber doll within the transgender and transvestite community. The activity may also be part of ‘cosplay’ (i.e., costume play). As the article at the Rubber World Rendezvous website claims, these people use “the rubber doll theme as a vehicle for play, disguise, sissification, cross dressing…This generally follows a common theme of Forced Femme or being turned into a female doll animate or inanimate. Again shape altering garments and female masks figure in this identity change. Many equate this to being turned into a Barbie Doll. Many [transvestites] who like shiny materials are now dressing in Latex and rubber as part of their look and while not wearing masks they are considered a rubber doll”.
• Show dolls: This is where individuals dress up as a rubber doll for exhibition purposes and may be part of either the BDSM and/or transvestite and transgender communities. In sadomasochistic relationships, show dolls are made to look as pretty as possible by their dommes or mistresses to show off to others in the rubberdolling scene (e.g., at fetish balls). Here, the dominant partner may actually play with the submissive as if it was a real doll. Show dolls are typically female in appearance, and the female form is accentuated and exaggerated.
• Art dolls: This is where individuals dress up as a rubber doll as an art form or art statement (i.e., a piece of ‘living art’ or ‘street theatre’) and may have nothing to do with sex or fetishistic sex (i.e., it is purely about seeing the doll from an aesthetic perspective). Such dolls may also be used to feature in fetish photography magazines (of which there seem to be a growing array based on what I came across while researching this article).

So how does someone actually transform another person into a doll? The Rubber World Rendezvous claims:

“This is done through dressing the subject in latex rubber garments and specialty items to change their form and look. Generally the basis for all of the forms of rubber doll is the female type cat suit which has a tight waist, bust cups for breast forms or attached inflatable breasts. The cut of the suit is usually female. Add to this the bra, breasts and padded hips along with a female mask and wig (if required) you have a basic naked doll. From here one dresses the doll however you desire to achieve the look you want”.

The Latex Wiki entry on rubberdolling claims that some people attempt to use (“and have variably succeeded”) the outer shells of blow-up sex dolls as full body suits. However, it then goes on to say that most inflatable dolls are too small to totally engulf someone, but that some varieties are reasonably life size. Blow-up dolls are usually made from materials such as PVC and latex, and therefore are not always sufficiently flexible for comfortable wear. The same article also claims that looners (i.e., balloon fetishists) may use heated air to stretch various plastic inflatables whilst retaining the proportions of the object close to original.

There is little in the way of an established literature on rubberdolling although there are quite a few rubberdollers that have their own webpage. One of the more interesting (and in-depth) ones is the Swedish Rubber Puppett site. The site’s owner is very open and reflective about his rubberdolling and I reproduce here what he has to say in his own words:

“I am a rubberdoll from the very south part of Sweden with a deep love for latex. I created this site to be able to reach out to other latex lovers and to make new friends all over the world. The rubber scene in Sweden is quite limited, especially if you are into dolling. I have been into latex and anything tight and shiny for as long as I can remember and some time ago I dressed up as a doll and I instantly felt this was my ‘thing’…Many people think of a rubberdoll as something passive and submissive, which is often the case. However, I am neither passive nor submissive and do this for entirely different reasons. For me it is all about dressing up and [transforming] myself into a different character. Perhaps this is similar to people who are into cosplay…Like an exhibitionist I love the way people turn their heads and look at me, some with fascination and some with fear in their eyes”.

Arguably the most interesting part of Rubber Puppett’s account is where he talks about where his love of dressing in rubber came from. He reported that:

I have been into rubber, latex and all shiny and tight things for as long as I can remember. As a young child I loved to dress up in rain clothes. I can remember the nice feeling I got the first time I tried a couple of waders. Now I am more focused towards latex, but I am still quite fond of those things, especially rubber boots. It wasn’t until I left home to study that I came into contact with latex…I did like the look of it and I decided to buy some simple garments for me and my girlfriend. I instantly fell in love with the tight feeling of the rubber clothes, the smell and the look of them. I soon ordered some more latex clothes such as hoods, stockings and dresses. When I first saw myself in the mirror wearing a hood I was instantly hooked. Since that day I have worked on my rubberdoll persona to create my fantasy woman”.

Based on what I have read elsewhere, I wouldn’t describe this account of rubberdolling as typical (and neither does he). Whether any academic research ever gets carried out on the topic remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an area that is of psychological interest.

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

Further reading

Latex Wiki (2011). Doll. Located at: http://www.latexwiki.com/index.php?title=Doll

Rubber Puppett (2012). About Rubber Puppett. Located at: http://rubberpupett.com/about.html

Rubber World Rendezvous (2013). Frequently asked questions. Located at: http://www.rubberdollworldrendezvous.com/faq.php

Needle work: A beginner’s guide to belonophilia

A year ago, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported the case of a 58-year old Australian facial surgeon (Arthur Bosanquet) who was disqualified from practicing as a dentist after admitting to the Dental Tribunal of New South Wales that he had a “needle fetish” with an underlying homosexual/bisexual interest that led to the sexual abuse of three teenage patients. He was initially jailed for nine months for both indecent and common assaults but on appeal these were downgraded to suspended sentences. As the article in the SMH noted:

“[Bosanquet] devised a bogus university study which tricked the young men into masturbating in front of him…The surgeon blamed his behaviour on his needle fetish, sexual interests, and too much work…The tribunal heard evidence that, in several cases, Bosanquet offered the young men money to complete the study, which focused on taking blood pressure readings and blood samples before and after masturbation. The incidents, which spanned an eight-year period, included two occasions where he conducted the ‘study’ at the patients’ homes”

In another case last year reported by Asia One News, a 40-year old man from Kuala Lumpur had pricked “scores of needles into his lover’s body” claiming that he had been performing acupuncture on her. His lover was forced to endure his fetishistic use of needles and was threatened with stabbing if she did not let her become his human pin cushion. He threatened to knife her if she did not submit to his fetish. The report noted:

“The woman was startled from her slumber by a sharp piercing feeling on her body. The man pointed a knife at her and threatened to kill her, saying he was going to perform acupuncture on her. Afraid, she gave in to the agonizing ‘treatment’. The man told her that he, too, needed the treatment and wanted her to prick needles into his body. The victim, worried that the matter could get out of hand, told her boyfriend she needed to wash up and prepare for work. She pleaded with him to remove the needles and pins from her face, hands and body. During the brief respite, the frightened woman stealthily left the house and fled to the Sungai Besi police station to lodge a report”.

In his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, Dr Anil Aggrawal defines belonophilia as the deriving of sexual pleasure and arousal from pins or needles and both of the above cases appear to belonophiles (although I only have media stories as ‘evidence’).

In a previous blog on piquerism (sexual arousal from penetrating another person’s body with sharp objects such as pins, razors, knives, etc.) I briefly looked at the case of 25-year-old American (Frank Ranieri) who was accused of paying large amounts of money to at least five young females in exchange for poking their buttocks with sharp objects (e.g., pens, pins, nails, etc.) while masturbating. Although Ranieri was a piquerist, it could also be argued that he was (in part at least a belonophile). As one article on the case noted:

“Ranieri was charged with two counts of second-degree assault as a sexual felony for paying a 17-year-old Richmond Valley teen about $6,000 to be his erotic pincushion for about a year and a half…Ranieri liked to see pins go through muscle and flesh…He didn’t see much wrong with it”.

Although media stories relating to ‘needle fetishes’ appear to be relatively rare, clinical and medical case studies in the academic literature are almost non-existent. One of the very few academic case studies of pin fetishism was published back in a 1954 issue of the medical journal The Lancet. Dr. W. Mitchell and two other colleagues reported the case of an epileptic male with a safety pin fetish (in fact, there is a known association between epilepsy and sexual fetishism). For as long as he could remember, the patient had had a safety pin fetish and often entered a trance-like state when gazing at a safety pin. The man claimed that during his early childhood, contemplation of an actual or imagined safety pin evoked a feeling described by the man as “thought satisfaction”. During his teenage years, the `thought satisfaction’ developed into absence seizures, and then motor automatisms. At the age of 38-years, the patient was given a temporal lobectomy. This completely eliminated both the epilepsy and his fetishistic desire for safety pins.

The sexualization of pin and needles has long been part of sexual sado-masochistic practices and is known as ‘needle play’. The Informed Consent website has an article on the practices and notes that:

“Needle play is the practice of inserting needles under the skin of the submissive. Needle play is considered [a form of] Edge Play and care should be taken to follow all appropriate safety precautions when engaging in play in order to avoid injury or infection. Only use sterile needles approved for medical use, and not reuse them after they have been used. The basic idea is that the needle should travel just underneath the surface of ordinary skin, to emerge through the skin a short distance from where it was inserted. The needle tips have a bevel. With regard to the skin being pierced, the bevel may be up or down (it’s personal preference). Shallower [equals] More Pain, Larger Diameter Needle [equals] More Pain. Do not stick needles into internal organs, bones, eyes, etc. Again, the idea is that the needle should travel just underneath ordinary skin, passing only through skin and the subcutaneous layers just underneath the surface”.

The Informed Consent website also makes reference to very specific types of needle play including genital play piercing and nipple piercing. The article claims that those individuals that like “intense nipple play” also like temporary nipple piercing. The article also notes that:

“The needle can be thrust through back of the nipple, taking care to include areolar tissue. An entire rosette of needles can be inserted. This of course can be dangerous, with potential exchange of bodily fluids and other infection. Don’t pierce wrists, hands, or spines, or near them. In general, piercing near a nerve tract (e.g., near joints); avoid piercing where bones are close to the skin surface. Waist to shoulders is usually fine, though one should avoid the armpit and sternum. The primary danger in play piercing is infection. Be sure that the person you are playing with would recognize the signs of infection should they occur”.

The Wikipedia entry on play piercing briefly examines both needle play and recreational acupuncture and defines such practices as temporary where the main reason for engaging in the behaviour is to enjoy the experience rather than permanent body decoration. Other motivations for engaging in needle play include (i) a mode of self-expression, (ii) spiritual self-discovery, (iii) sexual pleasure, (iv) simple entertainment, (v) raising awareness, (vi) relieving boredom, and/or (vii) as “part of a ritual imitating mock tribal cultures”. The article also claims:

“Play piercing can produce an intense natural endorphin high which can last for hours and can induce orgasm in many of the people who experience it. The experience of multiple piercings in an erotically or spiritually charged context is qualitatively very different from the experience most people have had with phlebotomists in medical settings, in part because the needle is placed ‘through’ the skin at a secant so that both ends are accessible, rather than ‘into’ the skin”.

Whether ‘needle play’ can really be classed as a ‘needle fetish’ as part of belonophilia is debatable. The (online non-academic) needle play literature appears to be more rooted in erotic piercing that needle fetishes per se. There are certainly a growing number of academic papers on sexual piercing since Dr. Neil Buhrich’s research in a 1983 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior (so I’ll leave that for another blog). Genuine ‘needle fetishism’ appears to be very rare.

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.

Asia One News (2012). Man has ‘acupuncture’ fetish, January 4. Located at: http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Malaysia/Story/A1Story20120104-319766.html

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

Fuller, B. (2012). Dentist disqualified over ‘needle fetish’. Sydney Morning Herald, August 21. Located at: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/dentist-disqualified-over-needle-fetish-20120821-24jdc.html

Informed Consent (2012). Needle play. Located at: https://www.informedconsent.co.uk/dictionary/Needle_play/

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

Mitchell, W. & Falconer, M.A. & Hill, D. (1954). Epilepsy with fetishism relieved by temporal lobe lobectomy. Lancet, 2, 626-630.

PervScan (2007). Piquerism in New York. June 12. Located at: http://pervscan.com/2007/06/12/piquerism-in-new-york/

Spencer, P.N. (2007). Bizarre allegations at pin-fetish arraignment. Staten Island Advance, June 6. Located at: http://blog.silive.com/advanceupdate/2007/06/bizarre_allegations_at_pinfeti.html

Wikipedia (2012). Play piercing. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_piercing

Heard mentality: A brief look at headphone fetishism

“Just wondering why some of us like seeing pictures of women in headphones? I think it can be a bit creepy and fetishist. Do we have reclusive guys on this board that (a) don’t have girlfriends and (b) are also so enamored with gear that they want their dream girl to be utilizing or associated with said gear? I will say that if I ever desire to see women in headphones, please slap me. I really don’t want to get that deep into gear-love!” (American male, post at Head-Fi website)

I can honestly say one of the strangest sites that I’ve come across in my search for weird sexual fetishes is the Headph0ne Fet1sh website. Not surprisingly, it’s a site dedicated to “all manner of ladies wearing all kinds of headphones”. There appears to be thousands of photographs and video clips of attractive woman wearing headphones. Even the site itself acknowledges that its topic matter is strange and that the attraction is aesthetic rather than overtly sexual:

“You might wonder why such a strange fetish has a huge website devoted to it, well the answer is simple – it has lots of really devoted fans, who scour the internet day and night to find awesome pictures for the site. There are many more popular fetishes, the websites of which don’t add up to the content of this one site for this fetish. So don’t knock it until you’ve tried it…You won’t find any explicitly sexual images on the site, as this fetish tends be more orientated towards an aesthetic appreciation of ladies in headphones, rather than the more run-of-the-mill ‘wearing the fetish object during sex’ sort of thing. There are visitors to this site who do enjoy that sort of thing, but they are in the minority”.

I also came across a webpage hosted by The Church of Headphone Fetish that appears to be more geared towards anime-type illustration material rather than the photograph and video clips found on the Headph0ne Fet1sh website (a similar selection of headphone fetish illustrations – although not just restricted to anime – can also be found on the Deviant Art website). The opening blurb (in the style of a vicar’s sermon) and somewhat tongue-in-cheek announced:

“All rise. In the name of past headphone girls, current headphone girls, and future headphone girls, amen. We thank you, headphone goddess, for blessing us with past headphone girls, current headphone girls, and future headphone girls. When all other fetishes fail, headphones rose majestically to the challenge. Reestablished the otaku/perverted spirit inside all men, rekindled our fire of passion for the mighty search engine of Google. And so today we offer our utmost respect for the Goddess of Headphone, and will recruit countless believers in the name of headphones. May the eternal light of Headphone Fetish guide us to salvation”.

Headphone fetishism would appear to be a relatively rare sexual activity, as it doesn’t 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. Furthermore, there is not a single reference to headphone fetishism in any academic article or book that I am aware of. Therefore, I went online in search of people that had confessed to this strange fetish. I have to admit that it was fairly slim pickings but I did find the following admissions:

• Extract 1: “I dunno why, but I find hot girls with a headphone hot. True story. And I hope I am not the only one” (9mm, heterosexual male)
• Extract 2: “I don’t know why but I find girls with headphones extremely attractive! She could be a normal girl, everyday run of the mill average 6.5-7 [out of 10], but put a pair of phones on her, and she shoots up to an 8-9 to me automatically! It’s crazy how attractive they get to me. Not just these pics specifically, but in general, it’s a BIG turn-on and I would absolutely lose it if they wore a skirt, tank top and knee socks while rockin’ out with a pair of oversized headphones” (Steven, heterosexual male)
• Extract 3: “Anyone else find headphones kind of sexy, especially when paired with another fetish? I was wearing headphones the other day to block out distracting outside noise when I noticed. I kind of like the way they feel. It was kind of…sexy. Now that I’ve discovered some sexy sounds/songs they’re kind of like a kinky sex toy” (Erobert, homosexual male)
• Extract 4: “I don’t have any fetishes (that I’ll admit to publicly). But I have to confess that hot women in headphones touches a chord. Earbuds just don’t do it for me, ya know? But princess Leia’s ludicrous locks? Mmmm. What is it about muffins around the ears I like so much? I don’t know what is. Maybe it’s because every picture of a girl you see with headphones on – she’s happy – or intensely channeling her muse – singing….something” (David, heterosexual male)
• Extract 5: “I am [a headphone fetish sex man]. [Although] headsets are often used in bondage experiences, I find headphones highly sexy, especially huge, complicated and elaborate military headsets…This is the source of a lot of fantasies and erotic situations. I’ve wide collection of pics with men in headsets and headphones” (Ted, homosexual male)
• Extract 6: “I have a headphone fetish…Then, I stumbled on Headphone Muslims and my eyes were opened to the brilliance of pretty anime-style girls wearing new and antique high-quality headphones! Musume is a Japanese term for ‘girl’…But what’s so cute about a girl wearing headphones? Is it the way the phones look like large ears? Is it the way the headphone cord tends to run and drape and tangle across the girl’s body, somewhat like a snake or a string of flowers? Or, maybe it’s the deep sense of relaxation that the girls seem to possess? Well, whatever it is, the image is certainly rather sexy, in a geeky way at least” (Jae Mie, heterosexual male).

To be honest, I can’t really be sure that any of these quotes in any way show a genuine fetish (as most seem to be a sexual preference rather than an exclusive focus for sexual arousal). However, if they are honest quotes (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), the only conclusions I can draw are that the fetish is (i) male-based, (ii) found across the sexual orientation spectrum as both heterosexual and homosexual appear to have such sexual preferences, and (iii) not just restricted to real humans (as some appear to be sexually attracted to cartoon-like representations). This latter observation suggests there may be some psychological and behavioural overlaps with toonophilia (which I covered in a previous blog). There may also be overlaps with other sexual behaviours such as sadomasochistic bondage. The person in Extract 3 above (Erobert) also noted in his posting on the topic that:

“I guess we are out there as a sub fetish group – a very small one at that…I like sleek headphones; though large one’s aren’t bad either. Very hot when used in bondage, some sexy scenarios like listening to erotic music or sounds are a big turn-on. Or binural sounds that reportedly can cause an orgasm. Wouldn’t mind being tested a test subject for that”

In the absence of scientific research, why anyone should be sexually attracted to headphones is anyone’s guess. David Täht, writing on his Postcards From The Bleeding Edge website speculated as to what makes wearing headphones so fetishistic. He said:

‘I think it’s because as a female they are so alien to males…that wearing a pair of big cans is a bold statement ‘I’m listening to music’. There are so many ways you use that or can use that. Right from the start you can relate to what they are doing and their attention is focused on the music, i.e., not another man so you can’t even use the music/phones, as a pickup line”

The Is It Normal? website included a discussion thread on headphone fetish following a post from someone who started a discussion thread by saying “girls wearing headphones are extremely attractive”. The site also featured a poll for its readers and the overwhelming majority (86%) responded by saying headphone fetish is normal (although I have no idea how many people voted – it might just have been the six people who took part in the discussion). Elsewhere, another online discussion on the Banging Tunes website prompted one discussant to say that headphone fetish is “strange [but] not as odd as balloons or clowns but still very strange”. Personally, if headphone fetish really exists, my own view is that its etiology is most likely explained by behavioural conditioning in childhood and adolescence.

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.

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.

A lot of hot air? The public’s reaction to eproctophilia

A couple of weeks ago, my case study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior about eproctophilia (i.e., sexual arousal from flatulence), was given press coverage in over 100 newspaper and magazine stories around the world including those in the UK, Ireland, US, Greece, Italy, Germany, Holland, Spain, China, Malaysia, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana (e.g., New York Daily News, Huffington Post, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, The Sun, Daily Star, Metro, Times of Malta, Irish Examiner, Asian Image, and Cosmopolitan). Although it is not that unusual for one of my research papers to get international press coverage, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of negative and/or somewhat sarcastic coverage I got from some quarters. I lost count of the number of reader responses that used the words “hot air” in their reactions to the story on various news sites. Another write-up of the story that did the rounds on most US radio websites began the article with the sarcastic comment: “Well done, science. I’d put this discovery right up there with the cure for polio and the artificial heart”.

Before my case study hit the popular press, the first person to cover my paper was Marc Abrahams on his Improbable Research (IR) website under the headline “Academic Study of a Young Man’s Sexual Attraction to Human Gas”. For those who don’t know, the underlying philosophy of the IR website is to feature “research that makes people laugh and then think”. While I realize that my eproctophilia case study might inadvertently make people laugh, I never wrote it up to be the object (or should that be subject?) of humour. I genuinely did it to highlight there are no boundaries to the limits of human sexual focus and arousal. Thankfully, Abrahams’ report of my article wasn’t too damning (most probably because he was aware of my gambling research and had written about my career in gambling studies back in a 2010 issue of The Guardian newspaper). The IR story noted that:

“Professor Mark D Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University has published a remarkable new study. Here’s how we know this study is remarkable:  The university’s press office sent copies of it to many prominent science journalists, remarking that (1) ‘It’s the world’s first paper on eproctophilia – sexual arousal from flatulence’ and (2) ‘Professor Griffiths would be more than happy to talk to you in more detail’. A remarkable number of those journalists immediately sent it on to us at the Annals of Improbable Research. We are, in this blog entry you are reading right now, remarking upon that study. There is more. Lots more. In other respects, too, Professor Griffiths is an expert. So renowned is he that Wikipedia devoted an entire web page to him. One of the many things on which he is an expert is the academic study of gamblers. We have celebrated some of his abundant work on that subject. (We express our thanks, and other emotions, to the many journalists who instinctively decided that they should alert us to the existence of Professor Griffiths’s new line of research.) BONUS (unrelated): The 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Dr. Mara Sidoli of Washington, DC, for her illuminating report, ‘Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread’ [Journal of Analytical Psychology, vol. 41, no. 2, 1996, pp. 165-78.]”

I also got six emails from those in and around the eproctophile community evenly split between those who (i) thought the newspaper stories had either trivialized their sexual preference and/or were wondering why it had made the news given that the “fetish has been around for ages”, and (ii) thanked me for bringing it to the public’s attention. For instance, one man wrote to me and said:

“I read about your study on flatulence fetish in the Metro and want to thank you for bringing it to the public attention. I have a very coloured past in the sex industry and had many clients with this fetish – each embarrassed about being aroused by flatulence and feeling alone in their fetish. No matter how long I reassured them they would not believe me that there were others out there just like them. It brought a glow to my heart hoping they could find comfort in the article about your study and know they are not alone. They were all very lovely, polite and well educated gentlemen and I thank you deeply for showing them they are not alone”

Another eproctophile wrote to me and said:

“I read an article claiming you have recently published a case study called ‘Eproctophilia in a Young Adult Male’. As someone with eproctophilia, I find the idea of a case study on the subject fascinating…Do you have any ideas on where I can read it? If you have any further questions on the subject, I’d be more than willing to answer. Either way, thanks for your time”.

Given the wide media coverage my case study generated, I didn’t send out a press release and I only did three interviews about the published paper. The first interview I did was with BBC News Online and the very first question I was asked by the journalist was “Is this a serious study?” I then pointed out that the Archives of Sexual Behavior is arguably the best academic journal covering sexuality issues in the world, and that a quick look at my blog would confirm that I am seriously interested in the psychology of sexual paraphilias. After being interviewed at length by the BBC journalist, the story failed to make it onto the BBC’s news website.

The second interview I did was with Lauren Cox for the Live Science website. Unsurprisingly, I thought this was the best story on the topic as this was the only story published where a journalist had actually interviewed me. The only downside was that Cox’ story came out at least 48-72 hours after most of the other media coverage. However, Cox’ story was as much about how the internet was facilitating research on sexual paraphilias as it was about eproctophilia.

One upside of all the press coverage I got was the many additional referrals to my blog. For instance, I got lots of referrals from the Gassy Erotica website (an online fart fetish forum that caters for eproctophiles). I also got referrals from those in the pornography industry who know only too well there is a niche market for eproctophiles. One website that featured my case study was surprised how much press attention I had got given the known demand for eproctophile videos. More specifically, in a section called ‘Fart sniffers’ on the I Shoot Porn website, Billy Watson wrote:

“’Eproctophiles are said to spend an abnormal amount of time thinking about flatulence, and have recurring intense sexual urges and fantasies involving flatulence.’ This from Professor Mark Griffiths’ blog. While I can’t vouch for Dr. Griffiths, recently the ‘world’s [first] recorded case’ of so-called ‘eproctophilia’ has been recorded in a 22-year-old man from Illinois…I could have saved the British psychologist who interviewed Brad a lot of time by showing him the FARTING section over at Clips4Sale. My old pal Cinnamon Love made a nice chunk of change blowing big ones for her C4S clients. Urban Legend has a VHS tape featuring none other than Chuck Berry (Roll Over Beethoven) taking direct blasts from a blonde girl’s ass”.

Just for the record, I am well aware of the Clips4Sale website and have made reference to it in relation to other niche paraphilias in previous blogs (but admittedly not in relation to eproctophilia). So, will these recent experiences put me off publishing more paraphilia papers? In short, no. I am already working on a number of other case study papers but my guess is those will not garner the publicity generated for eproctophilia.

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, FL: CRC Press.

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

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Eproctophilia in a young adult male: A case study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, DOI 10.1007/s10508-013-0156-3.

Going to the dogs: A brief look at cynophilia

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am not averse to looking at various types of human zoophilic behaviour. So far, I have written articles on zoophilia in general, zoophilia classification, zoosadism (sexual pleasure from being sadistic to animals), necrobestiality (sex with dead animals), and very specific forms of zoophilia including delphinophilia (sex with dolphins), porcinophilia (sex with pigs), equinophilia (sex with horses), herpetophilia (sex with lizards), ophidiophilia (sex with snakes), ornithophilia (sex with birds including avisodomy), musophilia (sexual stimulation from mice including felching), formicophilia (sexual stimulation from insects), and melissophilia (sexual stimulation from bees and bee stings). Today’s blog takes a brief look at cynophilia (sex with dogs).

In 2006, Dr. Lisa Shaffer and Dr. Julie Penn developed a comprehensive paraphilia classification system and published it as a book chapter in Dr. William Hickey’s book Sex Crimes and Paraphilia. Within this they included a list of various types of zoophilia and reported that cynophilia referred to sexual arousal from having sex with dogs (and that canophilia was sexual arousal from dogs, which I am assuming means that the person being aroused may not have had actual sexual contact with a dog).

Last year in Florida (USA), the Tampa Bay Times reported the case of Eric Atunes, a 29-year old man who was accused of having oral sex with a dog. As it turned out, the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office “declined to pursue a charge of animal cruelty under the state’s new bestiality law” but it was confirmed that Atunes (an employee at the Pinellas County Humane Society) had six photographs on his mobile phone of himself performing sexual acts with his girlfriend’s three-legged dog, Ruby. The case was dropped because there is no law in Florida forbidding people having oral sex with animals. The newspaper reported that:

“Assistant State Attorney Beverly Andringa said her office declined to prosecute Antunes for bestiality because, out of the six photographs found on his cellphone, only one would meet the strict criteria of the statute. Officials also aren’t certain when all the photos were taken. Some might have predated the new law”.

In Georgia (USA), a 19-year-old man Bernard Archer was arrested after being caught on camera having sexual intercourse with pit bull dogs and charged with two counts of bestiality. A newspaper report said that:

“Dispatch advised [that] home owners witnessed a young black male having sexual intercourse with two dogs. WGCL-TV reports that Archer was hired to clean the cages of several pit bulls by Dr. Cathryn Lafayette, a local resident who owned the dogs. [On] Saturday [March 3], Lafayette was woken up from a nap by the Newton County police, who informed her of Archer’s crimes against her animals. Though initially skeptical of the claims, she was convinced when authorities showed her video evidence”.

I mention these recent cases just by way of establishing that sexual contact by human beings with dogs not only occurs but is reported on a fairly regular basis (i.e., both of these cases were from the last twelve months in the same country). There are also cases of what Dr. Anil Aggrawal would class as ‘cynophilia by proxy’ (based on a paper he had published in a recent issue of the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine,) where one person forces another (typically a man forcing his wife or partner) to have sex with a dog. Dr Aggrawal explains:

“This happened in R v Bourne (1952) 36 Cr App R 125 (CCA), in which the husband forced his wife to submit to a dog inserting its penis into her vagina. The husband was convicted of aiding and abetting his wife to commit buggery and sentenced to eight years in prison. The wife was not punished, since she acted under duress. In R v. Tierney (1990) 12 Cr. App. R(S) 216, the defendant took photographs of his wife having intercourse with his Alsatian dog for his own continuing satisfaction. In this case, three months’ imprisonment was given to the accused, but not to his wife, because she consented to perform the act in desperation in order to retain her husband’s affections”.

Dr. Aggrawal also noted that in ancient. Rome, the practice of canine bestiality was so common that professional people (the Belluri) supplied dogs specifically for this purpose. Much more recently, academic studies of zoophilia have typically collected their data online from non-clinical samples. These zoophiles typically have a preference for zoophilic sex and rarely seek treatment as they are happy and content with their sexual orientation. In a 2001 issue of the Journal of Small Animal Practice, Dr. H. Munro and Dr. M. Thrusfield (2001) reported that they had collected data on animal abuse from over 400 British vets. They reported that 6% of their cases involved sexual abuse based on their observations of injuries in the animals’ genital and anal areas. Of these, 21 cases referred to dogs and three to cats. Dr Andrea Beetz reported that among the 32 male zoophiles she surveyed, 78% had had sex with dogs. Dr Hani Miletski reported that among the 93 zoophiles she surveyed that most of her sample preferred sex with dogs (87% males; 100% females).

I have come across very few articles (academic or non-academic) purely on the topic of cynophilia. One of the most detailed (written by a zoophile) is at the Vivid Random Existence (VRE) website (an online essay on ‘Cynosexuality (or cynophilia): the sexual attraction to dogs’). I do not endorse any of the (anonymous) author’s comments and the essay is written from a pro-zoophilia standpoint. The author of the essay notes that:

“Among all possible variants of zoosexuality, cynosexuality is one of the most common because the zoosexual size comparison rule — the fact is that there are many dog breeds, such as the Great Dane, which are physically capable of having sex with humans (without abuse occurring). This is why cynosexuality is fairly common among zoosexuals”.

The author then provides numerous quotes from many different cynophiles to highlight the commonility of this particular sub-type of zoophilia. Here are a just a few of the many examples cited taken from online zoophile forums such as the Beast Forum. (Please be warned that these are sexually explicit and you may find what is said offensive):

• Extract 1: “I’ve only had experience with my one dog, but it is quite an amazing sensation, hot, tight, and slippery. A dog’s body temperature is a few degrees higher than a human’s, and with the extremely sensitive flesh of the human penis, makes for quite a pleasurable combination” (Neverfox)
  
• Extract 2: “I have been with both species [humans and dogs] and my preference would have to be [the dog]; tighter, warmer and always wet” (St Benard)
  
• Extract 3: “My male dog used to tell me that he was interested in sex or wants it…He would sniff at my crotch and paw at me. He only does this when he wants sex. This is Consent, both by me and by him. Any Zoo knows that animals if they want it, it may ask a human for sex. Zoos know that animals consent. There is no question about it!” (Anonymous)
  
• Extract 4: “I have had sex with a female dog and it is wonderful! They never turn you down, are always horny… so why the hell not! Why deprive a dog of a sex life? Best of all, you can’t get pregnant and can’t get a STD from them!” (Dglover)
  
• Extract 5: “Take it from me you will be addicted once you have a dog’s cock entering your [anus], but be careful the first time as his knot can really hurt if you have never had anything inside you before” (Oscarsbitch)
  

The author of the VRE essay uses these quotes to make a number of distinct points. The first point made is that the quotes indicate that some zoophiles prefer sex with dogs to sex with humans (and that zoophilic activity does not have to occur where there is an absence of a human sexual partner). This has already been confirmed in the empirical studies of academic researchers like Dr. Beetz and Dr. Miletski. The essay author also say the quotes “prove that most zoosexual people are devoted to their animals and treat them with respect, kindness and compassion; these kinds of people would never harm an animal…Additionally, it would appear as though dogs don’t mind having sex with people; in fact, some of them apparently like it!” The zoophiles may well be kind and respect the dogs concerned, but as I argued in previous blogs on both herpetophilia and delpinophilia, the animals cannot give informed consent, so therefore such sexual activity is (in my view) morally wrong.

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.

Aggrawal, A. (2011). A new classification of zoophilia. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 18, 73-78.

Beetz, A. M. (2004). Bestiality/zoophilia: A scarcely investigated phenomenon between crime, paraphilia, and love. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, 4, 1-36.

CBS Atlanta (2012). Cops: teen caught having sex with dogs on camera. March 7. Located at: http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2012/03/07/cops-teen-caught-having-sex-with-dogs-on-camera/

Jamison, P. & Morel, L.C. (2012). Man who had sex with dog won’t be charged because of unusual reason. Tampa Bay Times, June 20. Located at: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/man-who-had-sex-with-dog-wont-be-charged-because-of-unusual-reason/1236153

Miletski, H. (2000). Bestiality and zoophilia: An exploratory study. Scandinavian Journal of Sexology, 3, 149–150.

Miletski, H. (2001). Zoophilia – implications for therapy. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 26, 85–89.

Munro, H.M.C., & Thrusfield, M.V. (2001). “Battered pets”: Sexual abuse. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 42, 333-337.

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

Vivid Random Existence (2010). Cynosexuality (or cynophilia): the sexual attraction to dogs. November 14. Located at: http://vividrandomexistence.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/cynosexuality-or-cynophilia-the-sexual-attraction-to-dogs/

Williams, C. J., & Weinberg, M. S. (2003). Zoophilia in men: A study of sexual interest in animals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32, 523–535.

Kick-Gas 2: Another look at eproctophilia

Last year in a previous blog I examined eproctophilia (a sexual paraphilia in which people are sexually attracted to flatulence). I noted in that article that there had been no academic or clinical papers published on the topic. However, that is no longer the case as last week I had a case study published on this topic in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.  Today’s blog examines this newly published case study of Brad (a pseudonym), a 22-year old single man from Illinois (US). I’ve only selected a few bits from the full case study (so email me if you’d like to read the full account).

Brad first contacted me after he read my previous blog on eproctophilia. I asked Brad about his first experience(s) of eproctophilia. He claimed that compared to other eproctophiles who had “colorful first experiences,” that his experience was “a bit more tame than most, which is disappointing in a way.” Brad recalled that in middle school he had a crush on a particular girl. He thought “she was the most beautiful thing [he] had ever seen.” When talking with his friends, Brad recalled that one of them mentioned that the girl he had a crush on had farted in her science class. As Brad said:

“This blew my mind. Prior to that, I’d never really considered it. I knew by simple biology that girls farted, but hearing that the girl I had been fawning over was capable of such a thing sparked a strange interest in me.”

Brad first engaged in an eproctophile act at around the age of 16 or 17 years of age. He was with a male friend and up to that point he had considered himself as heterosexual. This was until he heard his male friend fart in front of him. Brad recalled:

“It was rather appealing in sound, and I found myself fixating on it. At first, I didn’t want to admit I was into his farting, but eventually I decided to experiment. I set up a bet at some point and intentionally lost, with the wager being the right to fart in the loser’s face for a week. I continued to lose such bets once every few weeks for about two years.”

I asked about his thoughts surrounding eproctophilia. He claimed to “enjoy everything about it” and had experienced it directly.

“I’m not sure how graphic of details you would like, but I have had my face farted on by both men and women, at point blank range. I like the sound and the smell. The ‘worse,’ the better. In terms of sound, I prefer a deep bubbling sound. In terms of smell, I like acrid sulfur. I prefer the farter to be clothed. I don’t particularly like seeing the anus open. It’s not revolting to me, I just prefer fabric for three reasons. Firstly, the sound tends to be better with fabric, particularly jeans or nylons. Second, the smell lingers in cloth, whereas in the nude it is a relatively quick blast of smell. Third, I like the look of butt cheeks better when they are defined by fabric.”

I asked why he preferred sulphurous farts. He said that:

“The more disgusting, the more I like it as it heightens the sense of duality. The more disgusting the fart and the prettier the lady, the more of a schism it is between the societal expectation and the reality. As for men, it’s simply more dominating for it to be a really gross fart than a mild poot.”

I asked Brad whether he was more sexually aroused when engaged in eproctophile sexual activity than when engaged in ‘normal’ sex. He then said that he may be “technically asexual” as he had no desire for actual sex (as he preferred masturbation to sexual intercourse). He was also questioned about the extent to which the eproctiphile acts were masochistic. He responded:

“Sometimes. One of my more common fantasies is receiving a fart as a reward for completing a task. I play video games, for instance, and one includes me helping a girlfriend solve a puzzle in a game. Then, while still playing, she tells me to get ready for my reward and lets one rip. There’s an idea of subservience, not necessarily masochism. An idea of being there without being the focal point, where she lets me smell her farts and rub her feet and cuddle up and such, without fussing too much over me. I enjoy all aspects, really, from the S/M standpoint in which someone dominates me by farting on me, to the subservient aspect of being like a pet or article of furniture in which she isn’t particularly dominating, just coexisting, to the aspect of dominance for myself in which I learn her closely guarded secret of what her farts sound and smell like.”

One of the more interesting things that came from interviewing Brad was that he was very forthright on what he believed about eproctophilia and other people’s perceptions of it. He said:

“Allow me to shed some light on why farting, of all things, is sexually interesting to us. First, let me mention that we are not sexually attracted to flatulence, per se. We are attracted to the person RELEASING the flatulence. Unattractive people farting, to us, is like seeing unattractive people having sex for you…For others, myself included, it is a matter of dualities. Social norm dictates that people in general, particularly females, do not fart in public, for others to hear. To see a beautiful, delicate lady passing wind is a breach of those expectations in a profound manner. That a beautiful woman is capable of producing a “disgusting” sound and smell is what attracts us, and makes us want to experience it. It can also be a matter of humanization. Again, social ideologies tend to place the beautiful, particularly women, on a pedestal of what makes a conceptual or archetypal woman. To hear her pass wind is to hear an admission of humanity, that she is the same as the rest of us. It is to learn her dark secret, the sounds and smells of her uncontrollable biological functions. This is more of a dominant matter, as it is more about wrenching her humanity into focus while society attempts to hide it. Therefore, it is not always a matter of female dominance. However, due to the internet pornography market, most producers choose to follow the dominatrix stereotype, as it is a reliable source of income and a familiar sexy medium.”

Brad was asked if he experienced any sexual pleasure from watching eproctophilia videos (such as those on YouTube). Given that smell is such an important part, I was interested to know whether ‘second-hand’ sources were less arousing. Brad responded that he did get sexual pleasure from watching such films. In fact, he added:

“While smell and the tactile sense of face sitting are important, sound is also another key factor. Being able to see that girls DO fart, or sort of live the fantasy out vicariously, is what I have to do. I suppose vanilla porn could be a good analogy. The physical sensation of sex is obviously very important. People still get aroused watching porn even though they can’t feel it, and I think it’s exactly the same with myself. When watching pornography, it’s more about the thought of it.”

Brad’s account of his early eproctophile experiences are suggestive of behavioural conditioning and/or sexual imprinting – in this case classical conditioning where being sexually aroused by an attractive women is paired with something that is not inherently sexual (in this case, flatulence) and then starts to become an erotic focus in and of itself. Brad also had very specific criteria for the behaviour to be sexually arousing (i.e., the person had to fart while fully clothed as it sounded better, and the smell was longer-lasting, and the farts had to be acrid smelling). Brad saw clear similarities between his interest in eproctophilia and being sexually aroused by watching females defecate (as he specifically noted his coprophilic tendencies in his desire to watch women on the toilet). The co-occurrence of Brad’s eproctophilia with traits of sexual masochism – such as the deliberate losing of a bet so that resulted in Brad being farted upon all week by his male friend – demonstrates that the behaviour has other paraphilic elements. A number of times, Brad mentioned the sadomasochistic elements of the eproctophilic behaviour.

According to a paper in a 2011 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dr. Lesley Terry and Dr. Paul Vasey assert that the scientific value of case studies is their utility in highlighting rare phenomena and their role in the generation of new research questions and hypotheses. The eproctophile case presented in my new case study hopefully fulfils these values. Clearly, this is just one case study and Brad is unlikely to be representative of the entire eproctophile community. Other developmental routes into eproctophilia may be possible. Further research is needed to assess the extent to which this case study is representative of eproctophiles more generally, and whether the etiological and developmental pathways are more complex than that described in this instance.

My case study also highlights the importance of the internet in recruitment of people with sexually paraphilic and/or fetishistic behaviour for academic study. Over the last decade, there have been a number of studies that have reported paraphilic behaviour by using online methodologies such as studies into zoophilia, feederism, hypoxyphilia, and sexsomnia. Without the internet, it is unlikely that my latest case study would have come to light. Brad may not have been able to contact me and I would not have been able to carry out the interview online. The online medium appears to be a particularly good medium for collecting data on unusual sexual paraphilias and fetishes as online data collection is much better for collecting sensitive compared to offline methods.

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, FL: CRC Press.

Akins, C. K. (2004). The role of Pavlovian conditioning in sexual behavior: A comparative analysis of human and nonhuman animals. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 17, 241-262.

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

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Eproctophilia in a young adult male: A case study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, DOI 10.1007/s10508-013-0156-3

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

To baldly go: A beginner’s guide to acomophilia

“Hello, I am a genuine single guy who just loves the look and have always wanted to date a bald lady – bald by choice or not. This is not a fetish or a flash in the pan. I am a forty something” (Alan, UK)

According to various online articles, acomophilia is a sexual paraphilia in which individuals derive sexual pleasure and arousal from bald people or with the shaved head and/or shaved genitals. Dr. Anil Aggrawal (in his book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices) made a passing reference to being ‘acomoclitic’ but this only refers to being sexually aroused by hairless genitals. Dr. Brenda Love – in her Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices – also briefly mentions ‘acomoclitic’ in her entry on sexual ‘depiliation’ (but again this only related to hairless genitals (rather than bald or shaved heads). In one (unscientific) survey asking a self-selected sample what their favourite fetish was, acomophilia accounted for 2.08% of all respondents (although the actual number of respondents was not reported) so it’s hard to evaluate how representative the findings were.

An online essay by Craig Butler examined the erotic potential of baldness (The ‘B’ Spot: An Examination of Erotic Fixations on Bald Men). He began with some quotes from a number of women:

• “There’s nothing that really sends me into orbit like my man’s bald head”
• “There are days when the way that the light glints off my guy’s beautiful, sleek dome makes me so ‘distracted’ that I can barely keep my mind on my work”
• “I care way less about some guy’s money, or his brains, or even his ‘equipment’ than I do about how smooth his scalp is”

Assuming these are real quotes from real women (and I’ve no evidence that they are not), they appear to indicate that the focus of sexual attraction can be a bald head (in and of itself). It’s worth pointing out that to be classed as a paraphilia or fetish, the baldness is the prime source of the sexual pleasure and arousal (rather than being part of the overall look and/or general attractiveness of the person). In short, true acomophiles would have an erotic fixation on baldness and/or hairlessness. Butler interviewed psychologist Dr. Nancy Dreyfus for her thoughts on acomophilia. She said:

“An erotic fixation is a preoccupation with either an object, say, gloves or bathing suits or theoretically Saran wrap, or a non-genital body part – often feet – that is a habitual part of an individual’s sexual arousal system…Acomophilia is the formal word for a baldness fetish, although it is usually used in reference to a fetish related to bald women”.

Butler also interviewed Isadora Alman, a marriage and family therapist (who has also written for Psychology Today magazine’s Sex & Sociology blog). She was reported as saying:

“People have all sorts of erotic preferences. Some, such as American men and breasts, are cultural, and some, such as small high breasts versus large round ones, are fashion fads. Of course these are trends and not everyone in the culture or time period adheres to them. Some erotic preferences are conscious, but many are of unknown causes. I had a friend who liked thick ankles and legs on women – not a popular turn-on. He remembers being a baby crawling around under the table in his mother’s kitchen when her women friends, who all had thick ankles, visited; he found that exciting. One of my clients adored his partner’s bald head because he said it looked like a penis”.

Butler noted that while it’s perhaps flattering to be an object of intense erotic attraction, it could be off-putting for people who felt they were loved for their baldness and not themselves. In relation to this potential downside, Dr. Dreyfus commented that:

“If a man is a boob man, a woman wouldn’t reject him out of hand because he never tired of her breasts. She would just want to make sure that he loved her soul and liked her as a person. If a woman feels really liked and seen for who she is, the boob fascination is an add-on that could make her feel feminine. If she doesn’t feel cared for as a person, it will make her feel objectified and annoyed. I don’t think it’s that different with a baldness fixation. You have to ask yourself, ‘Does she like me as person and approach me with care?’ In some circles, male baldness is seen as cool and a little avant-garde, and you’d want to know if your lover’s interest was personally erotic or image-based. A man might wonder ‘Would you still want to make love with me if my hair grew back?’ The idea that any erotic connection with anyone, however intense, can last over time without real relating is a rarely achieved fantasy. If you have felt insecure over your baldness, a partner getting rapturous over it could temporarily be a reparative high, but it does not a relationship make”.

In her interview with Butler, Dreyfus admitted that she was in fact the partner of a 61-year-old man who has had alopecia universalis (i.e., no hair on his body at all) since his twenties. As a psychologist, she subsequently admitted that she may have been subconsciously drawn to her current partner because her (a) own father started going bald in his twenties, and (b) husband of two decades had lost most of his hair by the time they got together as a couple. She met her current partner online and was attracted to his baldness. However, she did comment that the fact he had “no eyebrows, eyelashes or pubic hair was an acquired taste”. She also claimed that:

“Studies have shown that the one quality that most women prize most in men is presence – a feeling of “there-ness” – and when you think of the sense you can get that a man is somehow hiding under a beard, mustache or excessive hair on the head, you can appreciate why many women find bald men sexy. [Women want] to be let in. A man with no hair, particularly one who has gotten that way against his own choosing, has had to battle a small demon, become more visible and self-accepting, and hopefully has become realer and less defended in the process. This is a man who is hiding less, and the woman he lets in will treasure him for it”.

I’m not aware of the studies she is referring to and much of what was said is speculative (to say the least). I know of no academic research on the topic of acomophilia, so any psychologist can speculate to their heart’s content.

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.

Butler, C. (2011). The “B” Spot: An examination of erotic fixations on bald men. September 27, Located at: http://www.hairloss.com/home/hes-hot-and-has-hair-loss.html

Cougar, C. (2009). Acomophilia. April 16. Located at: http://www.christy1.dynamicmediadirect.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Acomophilia.html&Itemid=89

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

Getting the heads up: A beginner’s guide to partial unbirthing

In a previous blog, I briefly examined ‘unbirthing’ a fantasy-based sexual paraphilia in which individuals are sexually aroused by the idea of being enveloped and swallowed by a woman’s vagina. This is often termed ‘vaginal vore’ and is commonly viewed as a sub-type of vorarephilia (a sexual paraphilia in which individuals are sexually aroused by the idea of being eaten, eating another person, or observing this process for sexual gratification). While researching the blog on unbirthing, I came across quite a few references to ‘partial unbirthing’. For instance, according to the online Urban Dictionary:

“[Partial unbirthing is the] fetish of an adult head inside a vagina. [The] term was created a few decades ago when the fantasy of unbirthing was broken down into total and partial types with partial unbirthing being the only remotely possible form of the unbirthing fantasy. Even then it is an extremely rare activity and the practice of partial unbirthing, as opposed to the fantasy, is not a form of Vore”.

I had my doubts as to whether partial unbirthing could be anything but a fantasy-based sexual paraphilia until I came across what appear to be actual photographs and videos of the practice online (such as those on the partial unbirthing page of the Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED) website – please be warned that if you click on the hyperlink, the page that opens shows photographs of men with their heads inside female vaginas). In part of an online article on vorarephilia, the Serial Killer Calendar (a surprisingly knowledgeable website on paraphilic behaviours), it noted that partial unbirthing is also known as ‘adult heading’. Looking at the same online photographs as I had looked at, the article claimed “there is controversy about whether it has ever truly happened and disagreements about whether photos of the practice are Photoshop fakes”. The same article also questioned the feasibility of the practice in relation to the restriction of the oxygen supply for the person inserting their head (although this would arguably be an added turn-on for a hypoxyphiliac). The ED article also noted:

“Partial unbirthing (adult head insertion into the vagina) [is a] real practice as opposed to fantasy, it is not a category of ‘vore’. It is only done by sex partners who both find it safe and extremely enjoyable. It is a fetishism that is extremely rare and probably one of the rarest of all human sexual activities. The reason for this is that to be mutually enjoyable and erotic, it requires that the vagina must stretch to enormous size”

I have no evidence to dispute such claims but given the sheer pragmatics involved, the claims don’t seem unreasonable. One of the more in-depth articles on partial unbirthing can be found on the Wikibin (WB) website. It also claims that the activity is (unsurprisingly) “extremely uncommon” and “much more common as a pure fantasy than in actuality”. The WB article also claims that there have been attempts (but it doesn’t say by who or what) to sub-classify partial unbirthing under a new category called ‘endosomatophilia’. The article estimated that less than one in a million sexual partners have actually engaged in partial unbirthing (although personally I think this figure is still too high). The article also claims that it is mutually enjoyable and erotic for couples that engage in the practice:

“It requires that the vagina must stretch to enormous size. This requires a consenting, cooperative, and extended effort between the sexual partners, with both partners considering the same fetish to be erotic…This of course is only possible where the woman has an extremely huge opening of her pelvis. Such a huge or Justo Major Pelvis is also called ‘Giant Pelvis’. This condition is where the minimum pelvis size is enlarged uniformly in every direction by a linear factor of 1.5, or more than the average 11-inch wide pelvis. This 16.5-inch ‘or more’ Justo Major pelvic width is a condition that is only present in less than one in a thousand adult women”.

The article also claims that some normal sized women sometimes stretch their vaginas to facilitate orgasmic stimulation. This is sometimes as a consequence of the woman having a “fullness fetish” that according to the article is also known as a ‘bulk intromission’ fetish (I’ve tried to look for further information on this fetish but have not yet found anything). Although this would appear to be exceedingly rare, the WB article says that with “gradual repeated stretching they occasionally stretch almost to the walls of their pelvic bone opening” to the size of a newborn baby’s head.

There is still the fundamental issue of whether partial unbirthing is humanly possible. A number of partial unbirthing articles all carry exactly the same text about an alleged study that I have been unable to track down. The verbatim text used in most of these articles claims that:

“A well known government Hispanic study included the anthropometry (scientific measurement) of nearly 5000 adult women using anthropometric calipers to measure the largest pelvis at 19 inches bi-iliac width (side-to-side bone width). This made her 19-inch wide Justo Major pelvis have a huge 1.73 ratio when compared to the average size pelvis of only 11 inches width. This was even a larger size pelvis than a pelvis of ‘minimum’ Justo Major size (that requires at least a 1.5 ratio). If a woman with a pelvis of this very large size were to do the same vaginal stretching practice to near her bone opening size, she could then vaginally take inside her vagina a huge 24-inch adult head. That size head would be 24 minus 21 inches, or 3 inches, larger than the 21-inch circumference adult head that a pelvis of the minimum 1.5 ratio Justo Major size pelvis could potentially stretch around. This larger size 19-inch wide pelvis would require a lesser degree of stretching to be comfortable when taking inside a 21-inch (much smaller size) adult head. This degree of comfort might be comparable to a woman of average size being vaginally double fisted by hands of considerably smaller size, or even being fisted by just one large hand. This less common but larger size pelvis (one in five thousand) Justo Major pelvis would have a sufficient size to potentially make partial unbirthing much easier to achieve”. 

There is no academic or clinical research on partial unbirthing fetishes although I did come across a small unscientific poll on the Deviant Art website. The poll asked its clientele of self-admitted ‘sexual deviants’ what the strangest fetish was and 16% of the sample said partial unbirthing was the strangest. Unbirthing topped the poll (22%), followed by neophilia (18%; having sexual intercourse with baby children), and furry infantilism (11%; a form of paraphilic infantilism among the Furry Fandom in which adults pretend to be baby animals). Other strangest fetishes included cement fetishes (8%), necrofurs (5%; Furry fandom necrophilia), vorarephilia (5%), and zoophilia (3%).

After reviewing the scant anecdotal evidence I am convinced that that partial unbirthing fetishes exist at the very least in fantasy form and there are certainly examples of online fictional fantasy stories involving partial unbirthing. However, I remain ambivalent as to whether the practice can be achieved in actuality. The evidence (such that it is) suggests it is theoretically possible but whether there are genuinely recorded cases is suspect at best.

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

Further reading

Encyclopedia Dramatica (2011). Partial unbirthing. May 25. Located at: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Partial_Unbirthing

Serial Killer Calendar (2012). Vorarephilia. Located at: http://www.serialkillercalendar.com/VORAREPHILIA.html

Urban Dictionary (2012). Partial unbirthing. Located at: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=unbirthing

Wikibin (2012). Partial unbirthing fetishism. Located at: http://wikibin.org/articles/partial-unbirthing-fetishism.html

Wikipedia (2012). Pelvis justo major. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelvis_justo_major