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Stairing at the rude boys: A brief look at climacophilia
In a number of my previous blogs, I have mentioned sexual paraphilias that appear to have been derived from the opposite phobic behaviours. Some examples include defecaloesiophilia (sexual arousal from painful bowel movements), lockiophilia (sexual arousal from childbirth), categelophilia (sexual arousal from being ridiculed), and rupophilia (sexual arousal from dirt). Another one that I could add to this list is climacophilia (sexual arousal from falling down stairs). This particular paraphilia got a lot of media publicity a few years ago when Dr. Jesse Baring was plugging his 2013 book Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us. (which I will return to below; I ought to confess that I love reading Baring’s populist articles and Professor Paul Bloom [of Yale University] went as far as to describe him as the “Hunter S. Thompson of science writing.”). Climacophilia appears to be the opposite of climacophobia. The Wikipedia entry notes that:
“Climacophobia is the fear of climbing, especially using stairs. It is a type of specific phobia. Climacophobia is distinct from bathmophobia the fear of stairs themselves. Climacophobia is usually traced back to a negative experience, like falling down the stairs or having difficult time to climb stairs. The fear is also triggered by others, like witnessing somebody falling down stairs (either in real visualization or through media) or the other people he/she knows is suffering from climacophobia. Sufferers of climacophobia, if left untreated, end up limiting their activities and avoiding occupations that require the use of stairs or ladders. Sufferers tend to rely on elevators or disability-access ramps rather than stairs…Climacophobes tend to suffer from dizziness resembling vertigo when looking down stairs…Climacophobia can be treated using cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT], either independently or in tandem with other techniques. CBT can help sufferers stop negative thoughts about climbing while changing behaviors. Other treatment options include relaxation techniques, talk therapy, and medication for people who suffer severely from climacophobia”.
In Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, climacophilia makes a seven-word entry between ‘clinical vampirism’ (arousal by drinking human or animal blood) and ‘coitobalnism’ (having sex in the bath), and is simply defined as deriving pleasure from falling down stairs. There was no mention of it all in Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Various websites provide definitions including the Pro Boner website (“Climacophilia is an intriguing paraphilia characterised by sexual arousal to falling down the stairs. Climacophiles have their best orgasms when they’re falling down the stairs”) and the Buzz IO website (“Climacophilia is being sexually stimulated by seeing someone fall down a flight of stairs”). When reviewing Baring’s book, the New York Times defined it as “the erotic compulsion to tumble down stairs”. Wikipedia also has a short entry and simply states:
“Climacophilia is a rare sexual paraphilia, or fetish in which the subject experiences erotic gratification when falling down the stairs. There hasn’t been a wide body of research conducted on people affected with this particular sexual preference and/or fetish”.
All of these definitions and snippets imply slightly different things relating to the same alleged behaviour. While all involve some kind of sexual arousal from falling down stairs, the New York Times says the behaviour is an “erotic compulsion” whereas most others describe the behaviour as arousing, stimulating, and pleasurable (without being compulsive). One definition involves ‘orgasm’ being involved while the rest do not. The Wikipedia entry seems to imply that the paraphilia exists (it says “rare” rather than non-existent). The entry also says there “hasn’t been a wide body of research” suggesting there is some (perhaps a narrow body of research) – but that clearly isn’t the case. There’s none.
The journalist David DiSalvo interviewed Dr. Baring for Forbes magazine in relation to his book Perv, which covers 46 different paraphilias (all of which are listed in an article in the Huffington Post) – with paraphilias being defined by Baring as being “primary attraction to a target or activity outside of the statistical norm”. Although I agree that paraphilias tend to be non-normative, I’m not whether I’d ever use the phrase “outside of the statistical norm” as there are some paraphilic behaviours that the majority of sexually active individuals are likely to have engaged in at least peripherally (such as bondage and other milder forms of sadomasochistic behaviour). In relation to the paraphilias outlined in his book, baring told DiSalvo that:
“These included both exceptionally rare paraphilias (such as ‘climacophilia’ in which a person can only get off while tumbling down a flight of stairs) and the more run-of-the-mill ones that are detailed in the DSM-V, such as voyeurism, sadism, and frotteurism (which is gratification by touching people in crowded public places, such as subways). But that’s just a small sampling. The most authoritative list, cobbled together by an Indian psychiatrist named Anil Aggrawal, includes a total of 547 distinct paraphilias”.
If you type in Baring’s name and his book into Google, many articles appear which mention ‘climacophilia’. For instance, in an interview with Vice magazine, the journalist (Nadja Sayej) began her article by saying:
“You may have recently seen the soft-spoken Jesse Baring on Conan recalling the strangest of sexual fetishes. Be it arousal from falling down the stairs (Climacophilia) or feeling steamy from rolling around in stones and gravel (Lithophilia), nothing surprises the Western New York author and psychologist”.
Baring was asked by Sayej what the weirdest fetish he had come across but there was no mention of climacophilia (probably because no-one has ever come across it):
“According to a recent forensic resource by the psychiatrist Anil Aggrawal, there are 547 documented paraphilias. Some of them – actually, most of them – are quite carnival-like. But it’s important to remember that these more exotic manifestations of sexuality might be represented by just one lone figure in the universe: a single, sad, lascivious soul who can only, just to give two random examples, have an orgasm while fondling a mouse (“musophilia”) or while rolling around in ferns (“pteridomania”). It’s virtually impossible for me to pick the weirdest, since so many of them would fit the bill for truly bizarre. I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes in this literature, from a sex research pioneer named Wilhelm Stekel – who, incidentally, coined the word ‘paraphilia‘ in the 1920s. “Variatio delectat! How innumerable are the variations which Eros creates in order to make the monotonous simplicity of the natural sex organ interesting to the sexologist”.
I have spent hours online trying to track down any evidence that climacophilia exists and I have drawn a complete blank. Yes, there are lots of mentions of it (particularly in the articles on Baring’s book) but no dedicated articles (except a satirical one that I came across on the Dumb Buzz Feed website which you can read here). There are no online forums where like-minded climacophiles congregate and there are no climacophiles that have written so much as a one-sentence confession of being sexually aroused either by falling down stairs or watching others fall down stairs. In an academic review of Baring’s book, in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Dr. David Ribner made a specific reference about Baring’s inclusion of climacophilia and said it was “incredulous…is there really someone out there who can only achieve orgasm by falling down a flight of stairs?”
Based on my own research I think I can answer that question in two letters. No.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Baring, J. (2013). Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us. New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Bergner, D. (2013). Acquired tastes. ‘Perv’, by Jesse Baring. New York Times, October 4. Located at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/books/review/perv-by-jesse-bering.html
DiSalvo, D. (2013). Getting in touch with your inner sexual deviant. Forbes, October 24. Located at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/10/24/getting-in-touch-with-your-inner-sexual-deviant/#6f0f5548568e
Dumb Buzz Feed (2015). 7 problems only people with climacophilia will understand. May 3. Located at: https://dumbuzzfeed.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/7-problems-only-people-with-climacophilia-will-understand/
Huffington Post (2013). 46 sexual fetishes you’ve never heard of. October 23. Located at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/sexual-fetish_n_4144418.html
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Ribner, D.S. (2013). A review of ‘Perv: The sexual deviant in all of us’, by Jesse Baring. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 30, 297-300.
Dying for it: Bizarre autoerotic deaths (Part 2)
In my previous blog I examined some of the most bizarre autoerotic deaths reported in the medical forensic literature. Here are another five.
Case 1: Autoerotic death by aerosol propellant
Source: Medicine, Science and the Law. Personal details: 32-year old white US man. Single. Computer programmer.
- Bizarre death event: Found dead in bed with cassette recorder next to him. He was wearing headphones which playing “snorting” horse sounds. There was also a can of aerosol propellant. At the end of the bed was a large painting of a male strapped to the hind legs of a horse who was being anally penetrating by the horse. The horse was ridden by a leather-clad woman. He was also wearing some kind if homemade masturbatory device. His death was recorded as cardio-respiratory failure consistent with aerosol propellant abuse (death by misadventure). Self-administration of the chemical agent to modify the sensations of masturbation. He was covered in dry semen stains.
Case 2: Autoerotic death by clothing
Source: Medicine, Science and the Law. Personal details: 25-year old Japanese male. Single.
- Bizarre death event: Man found dead in his bed one morning. naked except for clothing wrapping his head and underpants which were pulled down. He was covered in dry semen stains. He had put a black skirt on his face and then pulled a second skirt upside down over his head and turned down the bottom of it. He then put a plastic bag over these two garments followed by a pair of tights. The legs of the tights were used to tie a knot around the bottom of the skirts. He then wrapped a third skirt around all of this. Death was due to suffocation.
Case 3: Autoerotic death by hanging (female)
Source: Handbook of Forensic Pathology. Personal details: 19-year old white female. Single. College student.
- Bizarre death event: Woman was found dead in her bedroom hanging from the hinge of her closet door dressed as an Oriental “harem girl”. A window sash cord was tied around her body in a complicated fashion and she was also wearing a blindfold and mouth gag (made from the belt of her dressing gown). Next to her lay an underground magazine (this was folded out and showed a bizarre dance involving a clock – the minute hand being a nude male who would make love with the other figure on the hour), a paperback Hitchcock book which explained her fantasy. The paperback contained the story about an Oriental harem master. In this story the harem master provides girls to his lord who stored them by hanging them around his walls on hooks
Case 4: Autoerotic death by vacuum cleaner
Source: American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. Personal details: 57-year old white US male. Single. History of heart disease and chronic pancreatitis
- Bizarre death event: Man was found naked slumped over his vacuum cleaner after a neighbour wondered why the vacuum cleaner had been on continuously for a long time. The man was found leaning against the dining table with his testicles, buttocks and thighs tightly bound with women’s tights. Near the table was a jar of urine, jars of lubricant and a wooden table leg covered in fecal excrement. The man was covered in burns from the vacuum cleaner. No defect was found in the vacuum cleaner. The man basically had a heart attack while engaged in autoerotic activity. The wooden table leg had been used in an attempt to stimulate orgasm via anal penetration. His wife had caught him masturbating with the vacuum cleaner before (they hadn’t had sex for five years). The death was classed as natural rather than accidental.
Case 5: Autoerotic death by hydraulic tractor shovel
Source: Journal of Forensic Sciences. Personal details: 62 year-old US white male. Married. Farmer.
- Bizarre death event: Found dead in a barn lying on his front pinned under the hydraulic shovel of his tractor. His body was covered with semen stains and there was evidence of masochistic sexual bondage. His clothes were folded neatly away nearby. He was found naked except for a pair of women’s red shoes (with 8 inch heels), knee high stockings and tape duct wrapped around his ankles. Ropes led from his feet to the tractor which when raised would lift his inverted body causing complete suspension. It is not known exactly what happened but it is likely that the engine stalled and he was crushed underneath the tractor shovel. He died of positional asphyxiation by chest compression. This was an atypical autoerotic fatality because he did not purposely use asphyxiation but it did cause his death.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Byard, R. W. (1994). Autoerotic death—characteristic features and diagnostic difficulties. Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, 1(2), 71-78
Cordner, S.M. (1983). An unusual case of sudden death associated with masturbation. Medicine, Science and the Law, 23(1), 54-56
Dietz, P. E., & O’Halloran, R.L. (1993). Autoerotic fatalities with power hydraulics. Journal of Forensic Science, 38(2), 359-364.
Ikeda, N., Harada, A., Umetsu, K., & Suzuki, T. (1988). A case of fatal suffocation during an unusual auto-erotic practice. Medicine, Science and the Law, 28(2), 131-134.
Imami, R. H., & Kemal, M. (1988). Vacuum cleaner use in autoerotic death. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 9(3), 246-248.
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Sauvageau, A., & Racette, S. (2006). Autoerotic deaths in the literature from 1954 to 2004: A review. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 51(1), 140-146.
Getting to the point: A brief look at injection fetishes
In a previous blog I examined ‘medical fetishism’. One of the sub-types of medical fetishism comprises individuals who derive sexual pleasure and arousal from being the recipients of a medical or clinical procedure (typically some kind of bodily examination). This includes genital and urological examinations (e.g., a gynaecological examination), genital procedures (e.g., fitting a catheter or menstrual cup), rectal procedures (e.g., inserting suppositories, taking a rectal temperature, prostate massage), the application of medical dressings and accessories (e.g., putting on a bandage or nappy, fitting a dental retainer, putting someone’s arm in plaster), and the application and fitting of medical devices (e.g., fitting a splint, orthopaedic cast or brace).
One type of medical fetish that I did not mention was that involving individuals that have ‘injection fetishes’. Obviously this fetish appears to be a very niche sexual behaviour within medical fetishism but there are various online forums and websites that cater for individuals who derive sexual pleasure from the giving or receiving of injections (or watching such acts). For instance, there is a dedicated forum within the Voy.com website where individuals share their injection stories, the Real Injection website (which features stories and clips from films and news stories where injections are administered), the Needing Needles page on Tumblr (which mainly consists of photographic pictures featuring hypodermic needles), The Injection Girls website (which doesn’t appear to be overtly sexual but would be highly arousing for those with an injection fetish), the Fetish Clinic website (featuring lots of medical fetish videos including injections), and even a dedicated Facebook page on the topic.
In researching this article I came across many online accounts (of various degrees of detail) of people claiming to have an injection fetish. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the statements but they appeared genuine to me:
- Extract 1: “I am an injection fetish person. [I] Iike to watch injection pictures [and] videos particularly a female being the administrator”.
- Extract 2: “At [the] age of 18 [years] I was hospitalized for a week. I had to [have an] injection every day [from a] nurse…On [the] first two days she told me to lower my pants [to give the] injection. [She] slowly injected the needle in my fatty butt. On [the] third day I told her to [take] down my jeans by herself. First she hesitated, but [did] it. [The] next day she came and [did it without me asking]. She lowered my jeans…[and] gave [me the] injection on [my] butt…She gave me injections and then made me horny by keeping her hand & finger on [where she had injected me. It felt] uncomfortable. but she still smiled. She obviously teased me and on the same day I [returned] home with an injection fetish”.
- Extract 3: “I ejaculate [and am] more happy if a nice woman dressed in nurse [gives] me an injection…I like very much the preparation protocol before injection…I have [had] this fetish since I received [my] first injection made by a nurse when I was 10 years old…This is a nice fetish. I know that is not very common but I know some people [who] like it, so we are not alone [in having] curious pleasures”.
- Extract 4: “I have an injection fetish…When I was younger I got a shot from a nurse and after injected she was getting very fresh and touchy with me. I could not turn her down when she said we must go somewhere and get it on…I have never felt so satisfied after she [injected] me. That’s where it started. She was forceful and demanding. The [injection] shot was large and scary. I wasn’t real thrilled about getting it but she said it [was in my] best interest. So I bent over. She swabbed me. I was a bit resistant. She was persuasive in her words…It was hurting. Then while she was injecting that was hurting too. I was squirming and moaning. But I would love for this to happen again someday”
- Extract 5: “I have an ‘injection fetish’. That means that I get only sexually attracted when thinking about women getting injections in their butt. I also like to have fantasies about myself getting injections in the butt by woman. This fetish is apparently rare, but also not that uncommon…As such, a fetish might not be something bad, but this one prevents me from having orgasm in normal sexual intercourse. The female vagina does not sexually really attract me…It basically destroys any relationship because I cannot have an orgasm or ejaculate during normal sexual intercourse…Has this specific type of medical fetish (or similar ones…suppositories, enemas, gyno) been researched in medical/psychological science? Once I know where this [fetish] is from, I can understand it and I can control it…To me, it appears I had this fetish from day one (of course, that was not the case, but [that is how] it feels)”.
Unlike the others quoted here, this last extract is from a person also provided further description about himself. He was 39 years of age when he posted his comments and claimed to have developed the fetish in childhood some time between the ages of six to eight years. He claims not to know where the fetish originated, and his only description of his childhood was that he had a father who used to beat him and who wouldn’t let him bring any friends to his house (including girlfriends). Although the accounts here are brief, all five are males, and three of the five extracts mention getting an injection from a nurse at some point on their lives had kick-started their injection fetish and would appear to suggest that associative pairing took place and that their sexual arousal from injections arises as a result of classical conditioning.
It’s also worth mentioning that there are also hard-core pornographic films where injections are central to the ‘plot’ – the 2011 film Lethal Injection being the most infamous example. (I say “infamous” because many newspapers – such as a piece in the Daily Mail – reported that China’s leading state-run news agency Xinhua posted the screen shots from the film on its website under the headline ‘Actual Record of Female Inmate’s Execution – Exposing the World’s Darkest Side’ and claimed it showed a real execution by lethal injection in the United States. In the film itself, a doctor has sex with a woman after she has been given a lethal injection and arguably is more about necrophilia and lust murders than it is about injection fetishes).
Academically, I’m not aware of any research specifically focusing on injection fetishes although a paper by Dr. Allen Bartholomew published back in 1973 in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry alluded to behaviours that have similarities to injection fetishes. Bartholomew was studying the characteristics of intravenous drug users and noted three cases of autohaemofetishism (i.e., deriving sexual pleasure from sight of blood drawn into a syringe during intravenous drug practice, something that I briefly mentioned in a previous blog on vampirism as a sexual paraphilia). He also noted three cases of ‘injection masochism’ in which users were sexually aroused from giving themselves injections. In both of these two features, it was argued by Bartholomew that both of the two features were considered to be brought about by classical conditioning.
More recently, in 2012 issue of the journal Rhizomes in Emerging Knowledge, Dr. Varpu Rantala examined the recurrence of drug injection scenes in contemporary mainstream cinema from a cultural studies perspective. She argued that in cinematic terms:
“Injection is a fetish – not only of drug users but a collective one. The injection shots momentarily fix the images of what is thinkable and sayable about intravenous drug use, centering it on an overindulgence in injection and reducing ‘addicted bodies”.
However, the word ‘fetish’ in this context is not being used in any sexual sense. She also makes reference to the portrayal of drug addicts in the work of US writer William Burroughs. Again, this is not used in a sexual sense but she does make some interesting observations about obsession and addiction:
“The coolness in Burroughs’s description of a junkie is paradoxically both ice-cold and mobilizing, or attractive, as understood in relation to the attraction image. These images may also be fetishized. Intravenous drug users may develop a fetish for injection, the ‘needle fixation’, an addiction to the injection itself that is often experienced as both repulsive and seductive (Pates et al 2001). But, it seems that “needle fixation” is not only about intravenous drug users: this kind of ambiguous fascination with the injection image as part of late modern mainstream everyday audiovisual culture may even be described a ‘cinematic obsession’: as the ‘hold [of drugs] on the modern imagination [is] seemingly as strong as the hold it has over those addicted to it’ (Boothroyd 2007, 9), ‘it is the ambiguity and duality of the symbolism [of the syringe] that is the source for conflict, and intense pleasurable obsession’ (Fitzgerald 2010, 205). The recurrence of these images in their over-indulgence of sensuous material of extreme explicitness reminds one of the processes of addiction as unwilled repetition of excessive sensual experience: a cinematic addiction…Repetitive, fixed and fetishized, late modern drug injection images are clichés that may ‘penetrate each one of us’ (Deleuze 2005, 212). This may also be about an intense encounter that moves us. In case of the injection shot, they form a place of intensity in a film; an attraction image (Gunning 1990) that reaches towards the viewer and that Williams (1991) has further discussed with respect to porn, horror and melodrama”
Finally, (and staying with films), a few years ago there was an interesting article on the Hannibal Studio Lo website (a site dedicated to critical analysis of all things Hannibal Lecter). Unfortunately, the website is no longer on the internet but one of the contributors to the site made the observation that the author of all the ‘Hannibal Lecter’ books (Thomas Harris) has (in his writing) a “fetish for injections, a love-hate relationship for the meaning of getting an injection and its purpose”. The article made references to the many passages in Harris’ books that concern injections but asserts that:
“The most impressive descriptions of injections in the [novel] of ‘Hannibal’ are those given by Dr. Lecter to Clarice Starling. Appearing in Chapter 94 there is a ‘Tiny sting of the finest needle – Starling did not even look down’ and in Chapter 91 there is ‘Day and evening again, the smell of fresh flowers in the house, and once the faint sting of a needle’. The essence of those injections, which would lead her from one life to another and help her cross the final threshold to her transformation. So what do you think is the significance of injections according to the Harris realm? Could it be that one of the ingredients of a dark and profound romance is the intimate enigmatic comfort of Hannibal’s injections? I think it is very interesting to note how Harris’s equation promises that from an ambiguous act that could be considered controlling, true freedom and tranquility are born”.
Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
(Note: the original weblink for the article concerning Thomas Harris’ “fetish for injections” was at: http://www.hannibalstudiolo.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1095&start=-1&sid=0f25ca4b4c2dca0bd9f85038ae600a03)
Further reading
Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Bartholomew, A. A. (1973). Two features occasionally associated with intravenous drug users: A note. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 7(3), 206-207.
Bizarre Magazine (2010). Medical fetishism. December 1. Located at: http://www.bizarremag.com/fetish/fetish/10393/medical_fetish.html?xc=1
Boothroyd, D. (2007). Cinematic heroin and narcotic modernity. In Ahrens, R. and Stierstorfer, K. (eds.), Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics (pp. 7-28). New York: AMS Press.
Deleuze, G. (2005a) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. London: Continuum.
Fitzgerald, J. (2010). Images of the desire for drugs. Health Sociology Review, 12(2), 205-217.
Pates, R.M., McBride, A.J., Ball, N. & Arnold, K (2001). Towards an holistic understanding of injecting drug use: An overview of needle fixation. Addiction Research and Theory, 9, 3-17.
Rantala, V. (2012). Hardcore: Schizoanalysis as audiovisual thinking of cinematic drug injection images. Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 24, 1-12
Wikipedia (2012). Medical fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_fetishism
Williams, L. (1991). Film bodies: Gender, genre and excess. Film Quarterly, 44(4), 2-13.
Giving someone the hot shoulder: Omosophilia and the naming of a new paraphilia
While researching previous blogs on sexual piggybacking and ‘lift and carry’ fetishism, I noticed that when the words ‘shoulder’ and ‘fetish’ were in the same Google search, I came across a number of discussion sites where people were discussing their fetishes for shoulders. Here are a few of the cases that I came across:
- Extract 1 (male): “I’ve never been into women wearing make-up, loads of perfume, and all that jazz, but for some reason, seeing the bare shoulders of a woman really makes me excited. Not that I want to have sex with the shoulders, but that they simply look hot, sort of like the way most men view breasts. Is this normal, psychologically?”
- Extract 2 (male): “I love a woman’s exposed shoulders. I’m very attracted to them, my major turn on. I love how they look [and] how they feel. Talking about their shoulders really turns me on”
- Extract 3 (male): “I also get turned on by the sight of a woman’s bare shoulders. That is why I love to see women in tank tops, halter tops, sleeveless tops, and off-the-shoulder tops (my favorite)”
- Extract 4 (male): “Broad shoulders are a pretty common turn on for women anyway”.
- Extract 5 (male): “I’m not into panties, lingerie, or wearing make up, but I’ve always had an attraction to sexy female tops. I have always had a fetish about seeing a woman’s bare shoulders and got off many times fantasizing about them. Not taking it a step further, I’ve always loved wearing female sleeveless blouses and tops. I know they make tank tops for guys, but it’s not the same thrill as wearing a woman’s black, sleeveless, turtleneck jersey. I also enjoy wearing halter tops, tube tops, camies, one-shoulder tanks, and leotards, which I wear openly at the gym. I never feel as liberated as when I’m out in public with my shoulders bare. I’ve never met anyone else who’s into this with whom I could share my fantasy. But I would like to hear from anybody who is, be it man or woman, who may also have this fetish”
- Extract 6 (male): “I have a fetish of girls sitting on my shoulders…I’ve loved this ever since I can remember…even before I knew what sex was. I have a female friend, and one time me, her, and one of her friends were walking through a field at night, and her friend said she was afraid of getting ticks and asked to sit on my shoulders. I lifted her up, and after awhile she started like bossing me around, telling me where to stand, etc…I enjoyed this. Is this fetish healthy? Sometimes I wonder if I let people push me around in life because of this fetish”
- Extract 7 (male): “I find a sexual partner’s shoulders really arousing, on both men and women. Am I in the minority or is it pretty normal?”
- Extract 8 (male): “This will probably sound strange, but I have a shoulder fetish. A beautiful girl, in a cute pose, with her shoulder exposed, absolutely makes my heart race”
Admittedly, there is little detail in these extracts and I have no way of knowing to what extent any of the extracts I have selected are truthful (although I have no reason to suspect anyone was lying). As there is little detail here, there was almost nothing on how the interest developed apart from Extract 6 where the interest in shoulders was more to do with the act of a female sitting on his shoulders rather than fetishizing the shoulders themselves. Here, the fetish (if it really is a fetish) is more akin to ‘lift and carry’ fetishes with overtones of sexual masochism (i.e., being bossed around by a female and getting a sexual thrill from it).
All of the extracts were from males (presumably heterosexual apart from Extract 5 who may be bisexual and/or a transvestite based on the small amount of information provided). Although I could reasonably conclude that shoulder fetishes are primarily male-based, I did deliberately include the comment made by a male in Extract 4 who pointed out that women often remark on the sexiness and attractiveness of men that have broad shoulders. This observation made the implied point that it is almost the norm for some women to find men’s shoulders a sexual turn-on but may be rare for men to comment on the attractiveness of women’s shoulders. Basically, when women talk about the attractiveness of men’s shoulders it is normalized whereas when men talk about the attractiveness of women’s shoulders it is fetishized.
As far as I am aware, not only is there no academic or clinical research on the topic of shoulder fetishes, but there aren’t even any articles (this I believe is the first ever article on the topic). There was nothing between ‘shaving’ and ‘showers’ in Dr. Brenda Love’s Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices and nothing in Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Shoulders weren’t even mentioned in the list of fetishized body parts in Dr. C. Scorolli and colleagues’ excellent paper on the prevalence of fetishes in their 2007 paper in the International Journal of Impotence Research (a study I have cited countless times in relation to my blogs on other sexualized body parts). Given the complete lack of scientific study relating to shoulder fetishes I have decided to name a new paraphilia based on traditional nosology using the Greek words for ‘shoulder’ (omos) and ‘love’ (philia) – thus this ‘new’ paraphilia is called omosophilia (not to be confused with ‘osmophilia’ – where individuals derive sexual pleasure from certain smells and odours).
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Gates, K. (2000). Deviant desires: Incredibly strange sex. New York: Juno Books.
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S. & Jannini, E.A. (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Research, 19, 432-437.
Handy crafts: A brief look at fingernail fetishes
The one thing about sexual fetishes that always amazes me is how specific some people’s sexual likes and interests are. One such fetish is fingernail fetish. According to Dr. Ellen McCallum’s book Object Lessons: How to Do Things With Fetishism, this fetish is a specific sub-type of hand fetishism (as other sub-types include finger fetishism and palm fetishism or include non-sexual specific actions done by the hands such as washing up or drying the dishes). According to the Wikipedia entry on hand fetishism, “this fetish may manifest itself as a desire to experience physical interaction, or as a source of sexual fantasy”. A quick look online suggests that the fetish exists as there are various dedicated websites catering for all sexual fingernail needs such as the Fingernail Fetish website (“a collection of soft-core image galleries and video catering to those with a long-nail fetish”) and the one run by the Pinterest website.
Fingernail fetishes are certainly referenced by leading academics and clinicians in the sexology field although most of the references to it point out its existence but give little information with respect to incidence, prevalence, or etiological development. For instance, the Austrian psychologist Dr. Wilhelm Stekel in his 1952 book Sexual Aberrations: The Phenomena of Fetishism in Relation to Sex noted:
“The true fetish lover dispenses with a sexual partner and gratifies himself with a symbol. This symbol can be represented by a piece of clothing, a part of the partner’s body (pubic hair, nails braid or pigtail) or any object used by the other person”.
Similarly, Dr. Martin Kafka in one of his many papers in the Archives of Sexual Behavior on sexual fetishism also made reference to the fetishization of fingernails without giving any detail:
“Fetishes tend to be articles of clothing, such as female undergarments, shoes and boots, or, more rarely, parts of the body such as hair or nails. Technically, hair and nails are body products but they are also ‘’non-living objects’ consistent with the DSM-III definition of fetishism. Feet, hands, or other typically non-sexualized parts of the body are not ‘non-living objects,’ however, and there was no diagnostic entity offered in DSM- III to account for persons whose fetishism-like clinical disorder was delimited by an exclusive focus on non-sexual body parts, such as hands or feet…As was noted in DSM-III, body products, such as hair or fingernails, can become obligatory fetish objects”.
Having carried out an extensive literature search on academic databases, the only case of fingernail fetishism that I was able to locate was a 1972 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, by Dr. Austin McSweeny who successfully treated a young male fingernail fetishist using hypnosis. I also came across a 2001 Spanish paper written by Dr. Jaime Tabares that the title translated as “Fetish perversion: From pathological mourning to alienating manic identification” and published in Revista de Psicoanalisis de la Asociacion Psicoanalitica de Madrid. The paper discussed the case of a 24-year Spanish male and the role of depression, paranoid anxiety, and pathological mourning in the development of masculine perversion and fetishism. The only reason I mention this paper is that the author mentioned that one of the fetishes (along with his masochistic fantasies) was for painted nails.
Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices) reported a truly bizarre case involving necrophilia and fingernails. Citing from a 1963 book by Dr. R. Masters and Dr. A. Lea (Perverse Crimes in History: Evolving Concepts of Sadism, Lust-Murder, and Necrophilia – From Ancient to Modern Times.), Aggrawal briefly described the case of a man who derived his sexual gratification from eating the nail trimmings of corpses. I have no idea if this would count as a genuine case of fingernail fetishism, but it’s certainly a case of someone who was gained sexual gratification from fingernails (albeit from dead people).
In a previous blog on fetishism, I wrote at length about a study led by Dr G. Scorolli (University of Bologna, Italy) on the relative prevalence of different fetishes using online fetish form data. It was estimated (very conservatively in the authors’ opinion), that their sample size comprised at least 5000 fetishists (but was likely to be a lot more). They devised a scheme whereby a person’s sexual preference could be assigned to one or more of three particular categories (fetishes for particular body parts, fetishes for particular objects, and/or fetishes for different behaviours. Scorrolli and colleagues said: “these were further subdivided to describe, in broad terms preferences for (the examples in parentheses come from our data)” and one of these specifically gave the example of fingernails (in this case, a sexual fetish for the biting of fingernails):
- A part or feature of the body (e.g., feet or overweight individuals), including body modifications (e.g., tattoos).
- An object usually experienced in association with the body (e.g., shoes or headphones).
- An object not usually associated with the body (e.g., dirty dishes, candles).
- An event involving only inanimate objects (they found no examples).
- A person’s own behavior (e.g., biting fingernails).
- A behavior of other persons (e.g., smoking or fighting).
- A behavior or situation requiring an interaction with others (e.g., domination or humiliation role play).
They reported that some of the sites featured references to nail fetishes comprising a total of 669 group members. This accounted for less than 1% of all fetish site members. I would also add that having read the paper and examined some of the sites given, I’m not convinced that all of these were fingernail fetishists as some of the fetish websites found (like ‘Bed of Nails’) may be sadomasochistic sites where the sexual focus is nails that are hammered rather than nails on the hand.
In my research for this article, I also came across lots of self-confessed fingernail fetishists. Here are a few examples:
- Extract 1: “I am trying to get out more and understand why my fetish for long nails is big for me. Well it all started when I was 5 years old as a little kid. I was getting babysit by my cousin’s girlfriend and well you know she had nice long natural nails about 1 inch, inch and half, and she always was filing them, round and a little pointy too, and painting them. I used to watch and get hypnotized by that. So one day she was watching her soap operas…I decided to get up and change the channel…She warned me if I changed the channel again, I would know what her long nails are for. So she came to me I ran and hid, after I came back in the living room she surprised me from behind with one of the hardest pinches I ever experienced in my entire life… I almost felt paralysed by that pain, and after that she scratched me, hard enough to cry and it hurt. But a few days after that she tried to scratch me again when she came, and all of a sudden I was getting aroused, so she said ‘I wont hurt you this time, but I would love to be able to scratch you if you let me’. So I let her, and she started very slowly and increased the pressure as time went by, it was getting to be a new experience for me, We had set little rules and boundaries to stick by too. So she would only scratch till I got red, and if I bled…I agreed to that [be]cause she loved to scratch hard and be rough, so she had to see a little blood to be satisfied I guess. [Now] you now know how my long nails fetish got started and was born” (JayG).
- Extract 2: “I definitely became aware of my fetish around 5 or 6 [years old] when I started to become aroused and curious to what the nails must feel like on my skin…A few years later it became more weird when I started to have scratching fantasies before going to sleep giving me my first wave of self-induced erections. Nobody who doesn’t have a fetish like this gets turned on like that at such a young age. It must be highly abnormal. But we ARE freaks of nature I guess” (Saba).
- Extract 3: “My nail fascination also began when I was quite young, but I most certainly was not physically sexually arousable at the age of 5 [years] by the sight or feel of nails. …Those early encounters I sometimes catch myself re-writing my own history with respect to the arousal part, because it’s hard to imagine myself not being physically aroused by nails, but in reality, I wasn’t, not physically. Nails didn’t do ‘that’ to me until I properly began puberty. What I felt at 5 was the excitement of the danger that nails posed (girls of 5 used their nails as weapons, I had no inkling they could also be instruments of pleasure), and certainly a heightened awareness of the differences between the genders. Even before I knew girls had different genitalia, I recognised they were meant to have long nails and we were not” (Scott).
- Extract 4: “I was around 5 or 6 (years old] is when I got fascinated by girls and women’s nails. This was way back about 55 years ago. I don’t remember seeing [long] nails…until I was 12 or 13. But if a girl had nails, she usually had them as a means of protecting herself. And hard pinching was the preferred technique. And some of the girls were very effective. I remember one girl whose nails weren’t that long, but were filed to a point. Another girl stopped cutting her nails when she was 12. I only saw her once after that time, but most of her nails must have been around 1/2 inch long, and she knew how to use them and she had a real mean streak. I guess there has always been something fascinating about a girl who might be smaller and weaker than any of the boys, but could put real fear into them. Also the thought always occurred that if the young girls could cause so much pain with their relatively short nails, what could an adult woman with much longer nails do to someone?” (MJ2)
- Extract 5: “I’ve got something with me that started out fun, but has turned into a problem. I’ve got a fetish for long nails. They turn me on so much. First when I was younger it was fun, I’d look at pics every now and then and get off to them. Now it’s turned into a 3 o 4 times a day thing. It’s really annoying. I feel like I’m in bondage to this. My goal is to quit masturbating all together cause I feel as though it’s holding me back spiritually. But everywhere I look I see long nails on women and I get so turned on. I’m having a hard time battling this” (SececaRD)
These are just a few of the many I have come across. There are a number of similarities in the first four extracts (which may be because they all come from the same online forum. The fetish appears to have begun in early childhood, and appears to have developed through associative pairing (i.e., classical conditioning). What’s more, there appears to be a sexually masochistic tendency among those who have the fetish. The final extract comes from a different person who unlike the other fetishists wants to eradicate his fetish. Most fingernail fetishist accounts that I read were happy living with their preferred fetish. This is certainly an area where the amount of clinical and academic research is limited and I can’t see further papers being published except from a treatment perspective should such a fetishist want to eliminate their sexual desire for fingernails.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Kafka, M. (2010). The DSM diagnostic criteria for fetishism. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 357-362.
Masters, R.E.L & Lea A.E.E. (1963). Perverse Crimes in History: Evolving Concepts of Sadism, Lust-Murder, and Necrophilia – From Ancient to Modern Times. New York: The Julian Press.
McCallum. E.L. (1998.) Object Lessons: How to Do Things With Fetishism. New York: State University of New York Press.
McSweeny, A.J. (1972). Fetishism: Report of a case treated with hypnosis. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 15, 139-143.
Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S. & Jannini, E.A. (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Research, 19, 432-437.
Stekel, W. (1952). Sexual Aberrations: The Phenomena of Fetishism in Relation to Sex (Vol. 1) (Trans., S. Parker). New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Tabares, J. (2001). La perversion fetichista: Del duelo patologico a la identification maniaca alienante. Revista de Psicoanalisis de la Asociacion Psicoanalitica de Madrid, 36, 55-78.
Wikipedia (2102). Hand fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_fetishism
Dosh spice: A brief look at ‘findoms’ and ‘wallet rape’
“How do y’all feel about [findom]? Weird I know. Those guys are creeps. But I use to do findom. I never dressed up or did crazy stuff like that but I used to use guys for their money. No lie (how do you think I got so many clothes) and NO I never had to send naked pics meet up with these guys or nothing, it was all simply over the internet and Paypal. They just want to splurge on you for being pretty. Well I haven’t done it in like a year and randomly one of the guys messaged me today and wanted to spend on me. I said okay why not…I was expecting like $50 tops. I haven’t talked to this guy in forever. And well let’s just say I made an extra $416 dollars today. In one minute. Literally” (Baelessboutique, vinted.com)
Earlier this week, I was contacted by Chris Summers, a journalist at the Daily Star. Summers was writing an article on exophilia (sexual arousal from aliens) and had come across my blog on the topic and was looking for some academic input into his story. He then sent me some of the tabloid tales he had published on sexual paraphilias including one published a week or so ago on ‘wallet rape’. Most definitions of ‘wallet rape’ (such as the one in the online Urban Dictionary) describe wallet rape as paying “way too much for something” resulting in “feelings of victimization, embarrassment, and guilt”. However, this was not the focus of the Daily Star article. According to Summers’ story, wallet rape refers to men who get a sexual kick out of giving money to women. More specifically:
“Hundreds of men in Britain and thousands more worldwide enjoy being under the control of a financial dominatrix or ‘findom’. These guys are not ‘sugar daddies’ who shower young lovers with expensive gifts in return for a sexual pay-off. In most cases they don’t even get to meet the ‘goddess’ they worship. They just enjoy being ‘paypigs’ or ‘slaves’…[most findoms] never [have] sex with [their] clients”.
Summers interviewed a number of individuals for his article including ‘Goddess Haven’ (a 21-year old female findom). ‘Bill’ (a 60-year old businessman who works up to 14 hours a day and is a lifelong ‘submissive’), and Dr. Jess O’Reilly (Canadian sexologist and author of The New Sex Bible). According to Goddess Haven:
“I’ve learned so much about my clientele in the three years that I’ve been on this journey. When I first started if you asked me these men were just completely weird and out of their mind, but why would I care? I was getting what I wanted out of it. As my journey progressed I realised that a lot of these people are just looking to escape their boring every day lives. A great deal of these men that serve me are ‘high powered’ businessmen who just want to come home and not be the centre of attention. Some of these men don’t even have time to spend the money they make for themselves and just want to see a beautiful woman enjoy it with no strings attached. I’ve realised that most of my clientele are turned on by losing their sense of control and being taken advantage of by a powerful woman. I’ll usually meet clients that pay well and can afford to session with me in reality. I have clients all over the world. I’ve had requests to kidnap people, tie them up and leave them in the woods. There are some findoms out there who give it a bad name, especially as it becomes more popular. There are a lot of women who are just hopping on the bandwagon and have no idea what they’re doing.”
According to the Daily Star article, Bill met Goddess Haven on the online forum Collarspace (one of a number of internet forums where findoms can meet submissives) and now “serves” her. As he said to Summers:
“I have served dozens of women in the past 40 years. I have probably spent about $200,000. [Haven] is truly one of a kind and I adore her as my goddess…She needs more than just me to complete her life. She may have lovers and she may not want me to have a lover. Whether she wants to cuckold me or put me in chastity that’s fine with me. I am just happy to serve her. I have an addiction but I really do budget. I spend about $5,000 a year on my goddess. I have a son and family obligations so they come first but I push it to the limit. I’m a normal person but I just have an addiction to serving women. [Haven is] confident and eager to explore my submissiveness”.
There was little in the article about why Bill was a submissive although Bill said he had issues with his mother who was a model, and appeared to adhere to Sigmund Freud’s theorising about the ‘Oedipus complex’ – the sexual desire shared between a son and his mother. The psychologist that Summers interviewed (Dr. Jess O’Reilly) made a number of speculations (although none of them relating to Freud’s psychodynamic theories). One of her speculations concerned the rise of the internet in relation to sexual behaviours:
“Everything predates the internet and the practice of dominating another’s finances has existed as long as currency’s history. However digital communities have created space for wider dissemination of information and virtual connections. You no longer have to leave your house to foster relationships of any kind.”
This line of thinking is similar to a number of papers I have written describing how the internet can facilitate sexual addictions among predisposed individuals (as I argued in a 2001 issue of the Journal of Sex Research) and bring together individuals with niche sexual paraphilias (as I wrote about in a 2012 issue of the Journal of Behavioral Addictions). In trying to explain why men would pay lots of money to be humiliated, Dr. O’Reilly speculated that:
“Sometimes those who are charged with a great deal of control at work, at home or in their community may see this as an exciting way to relinquish control of one area of their lives. Or it could be the thrill of humiliation and ridicule. Just as some people associate praise and adoration with sexual arousal, others have an erotic script that is dominated by emotions that are traditionally viewed as negative. Being humiliated can be a turn-on, as it forces you to be vulnerable…A sexual fetish need not entail sexual activity in the traditional sense. Sex gives us a high or a pleasure rush and so too can financial domination/submission. I would leave it up to each pay pig to determine whether or not s/he considers this fetish sexual in nature…Having a woman more powerful than you, seductive and manipulative enough to get into your mind to make you WANT to willingly hand over your money…Maybe their wives are boring and don’t offer much, maybe their wives are submissive and they just want the role switched. There’s a different reason for every client.”
Dr. O’Reilly went on to look at both the upsides and downsides of such findom/submissive relationships:
“Like any behaviour, financial domination/submission can be perfectly healthy or significantly problematic depending on how it makes the participants feel and how it impacts their lives (and their relationships). For example, if the pay pig is hiding his financial activity from his primary partner, I could see this taking a toll on their relationship. Honesty, consent and respect underlie healthy relationships – sexual and otherwise. I imagine many derive a thrill from the taboo of giving money to a stranger. However, if they derive pleasure from hiding their financial activity from a partner with whom they’ve agreed to share finances, this could be quite problematic. Most people crave a balance of security/predictability and excitement/the unknown. Blackmail plays into the latter need. In many cases, blackmail games are part of role-play and fantasy as opposed to lived reality.”
Although there is no academic research on the topic of findoms, other stories in the national press have appeared (and there’s even a short film called FinDom that has just been released – “a witty, sensitive exploration of loneliness and sexuality”). For instance, in the summer of 2015, The Journal featured a piece by Michelle Hennessey on ‘Findom in Dublin: The Irish men who are turned on by women spending their money’. As Hennessey noted:
“Readers may already be familiar with the concept of Femdom which involves a woman being dominant over a man usually through bondage, physical restraint or humiliation. Findom, as the name suggests, is all about financial domination”.
Like the article in the Daily Star, the story in The Journal also featured some similar case studies (although the men were referred to as ‘cash pigs’ and ‘money slaves’ rather than ‘pay pigs’). According to Hennessey’s journalistic research:
“The women who do this professionally are extremely active on social media and fetish websites. They post photos of themselves wearing the clothes and shoes they have been sent, pictures of them drinking cocktails that are being paid for by one of their slaves or snaps of their perfectly manicured feet. They also offer camera sessions with a variety of options, most of which involve humiliation like the domme laughing at the man. Many of their posts are extremely raunchy with some uploading photos of themselves nude or scantily clad and telling the men they could never have a woman that looks this way”.
As with any fetishistic or paraphilic behaviour, if it is carried out by two consenting adults and legal, there is nothing problematic about engaging in such activity. However, given that money is involved, this could – in a minority of cases – end up being a behaviour akin to problem gambling in that the person enjoys engaging in the behaviour but becomes problematic because the activity goes beyond the individual’s disposable income and causes problems elsewhere in their lives.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Griffiths, M.D. (2000). Excessive internet use: Implications for sexual behavior. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 3, 537-552.
Griffiths, M.D. (2001). Sex on the internet: Observations and implications for sex addiction. Journal of Sex Research, 38, 333-342.
Griffiths, M.D. (2004). Sex addiction on the Internet. Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts, 7(2), 188-217.
Griffiths, M.D. (2012). The use of online methodologies in studying paraphilia: A review. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 1, 143-150.
Griffiths, M.D. (2012). Internet sex addiction: A review of empirical research. Addiction Research and Theory, 20, 111-124.
Hennessy, M. (2015). Findom in Dublin: The Irish men who are turned on by women spending their money. The Journal, August 30. Located at: http://www.thejournal.ie/findom-dublin-2296085-Aug2015/
O’Reilly, J. (2014). The New Sex Bible: The New Guide To Sensual Love. London: Quiver.
Summers, C. (2015). ‘Wallet rape’: Meet the men who get a kick out of giving away money. Daily Star, December 27. Located at: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/480000/Wallet-rape-financial-dominatrix
The dirty smack brigade: A beginner’s guide to erotic spanking
According to Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, “erotic spanking” (i.e., so called ‘spankophilia’) is the practice of spanking another person for the sexual gratification of either or both parties. He also reported that notable ‘spankophiles’ include poet Algernon Swinburne (as repeatedly implied in his poetry) and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (as detailed in his autobiography Confessions).
Arguably the most well known (non-academic) spanking guide is Jules Markham’s 2005 book Consensual Spanking that examines (i) why people enjoy playing spanking games, (ii) how to conduct a spanking, (iii) how to receive a spanking, (iv) spanking safely, (v) organising a typical spanking session (vi) positions, postures and presentation of spanking, (vii) the use of spanking implements, (viii) aspects of spanking in role-play, (ix) basic control techniques, (x) sensual and erotic forms of spanking, (xi) spanking as foreplay, and (xii) domestic discipline. The Wikipedia entry on erotic spanking features reference to Markham’s book and Dr. Rebecca Plante’s paper on sexual spanking in a 2006 issue of the Journal of Homosexuality and notes:
‘[Spanking] activities range from a spontaneous smack on bare buttocks during a sexual activity, to occasional sexual roleplay to domestic discipline and may involve the use of a hand or the use of a variety of spanking implements…Erotic spanking may be administered to bare buttocks or normally dressed. Spanking can involve the use of bondage…The most common type of erotic spanking is administered on the bare buttocks but can also be combined with bondage in order to heighten sexual arousal and feelings of helplessness…A spanking may be carried out with the use of a bare hand, or with any of a variety of implements, including a paddle, strap, hairbrush, or belt. Other popular tools are canes, riding crops, whips, switiches, birches, sneakers, rolled-up newspapers, rulers or martinet”
Dr. Aggrawal reports that many spankophiles make use of a ‘spanking bench’ (and sometimes referred to as a ‘spanking horse’), a piece of furniture that is used to position the person who receives the spanking (i.e., a spankee), that may or may not have restraints. Aggrawal also makes reference to the nineteenth century British dominatrix Mrs. Theresa Berkley, someone that Aggrawal claims became famous for her invention of the Berkley Horse (a multi-functional device that combined spanking bench with several other sadomasochistic functions). The Wikipedia entry claims that:
“In some cultures, the spanking of women, by the male head of the family or by the husband (sometimes called domestic discipline) has been and sometimes continues to be a common and approved custom. In those cultures and in those times, it was the belief that the husband, as head of the family, had a right and even the duty to discipline his wife and children when he saw fit, and manuals were available to instruct the husband how to discipline his household. In most western countries, this practice has come to be regarded as unlawful and socially unacceptable wife-beating, domestic violence, or abuse. Today, spanking of an adult tends to be confined to erotic spanking or to BDSM contexts. The domestic discipline scenario is commonly invoked in erotic spanking, but with a bare bottom or totally nude, with bondage and less direct physical contact being a feature of BDSM”.
Most academic research papers (such as one on sexual paraphilias and fetishism by Dr. Michael Wiederman in a 2003 issue of The Family Journal) report that spanking is part of a much wider range of sadomasochistic activities including binding, gagging, blindfolding, whipping, choking, cutting, and piercing. For instance, a 1985 study by Dr. N. Breslow and colleagues and published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior examined the sexual activities of 182 sadomasochists (130 men, 52 women). The study found that the most preferred sexual activities for both sexes were spanking and involvement in master–slave relationships. A similar finding was reported by Dr. Charles Moser and Dr. E. Levitt in a 1987 study published in the Journal of Sex Research. They surveyed 225 sadomasochists recruited from a specialist SM magazine (178 men and 47 women), The most common SM behaviours were flagellation (spanking and whipping) and bondage (rope, chains, handcuffs, gags) of which 50% to 80% of participants engaged in.
A more recent 2001 Finnish study headed by Dr. Laurence Alison and published in the Archives if Sexual Behavior reported fairly similar findings. Again, flagellation (including spanking) and bondage were among the most popular activities. Most interestingly (and as I noted in a previous blog on sexual masochism), Alison and colleagues identified four sadomasochistic sub-groups based on the type of pain given and received. Spanking formed part of the first sub-group of sadomasochists. More specifically, these were:
- Typical pain administration: This involved practices such as spanking, caning, whipping, skin branding, electric shocks, etc.
- Humiliation: This involved verbal humiliation, gagging, face slapping, flagellation, etc. Heterosexuals were more likely than gay men to engage in these types of activity.
- Physical restriction: This included bondage, use of handcuffs, use of chains, wrestling, use of ice, wearing straight jackets, hypoxyphilia, and mummifying.
- Hyper-masculine pain administration: This involved rimming, dildo use, cock binding, being urinated upon, being given an enema, fisting, being defecated upon, and catheter insertion. Gay men were more likely than heterosexuals to engage in these types of activity.
In 2007, psychotherapist Brett Kahr published his book Sex and the Psyche and reported the results of a survey on adult sexual fantasies of 13,500 British men and women of all sexual orientations. Kahr reported that 18% of man and 7% of women had specific spanking fantasies. Spanking may also be associated with other sexual paraphilias. For instance, Dr. W. Arndt reported in his 1991 book Gender Disorders and the Paraphilias that among a small sample of 21 (of which 20 were male) klismaphilacs (i.e., individuals that derive sexual pleasure and arousal from enemas), 40% of the participants reported accompanying paraphilic interests that included mild spanking and other punishments (and suggesting sexually masochistic behaviour).
Although empirical evidence suggests that erotic spanking is not particularly prevalent among the general population (at least in terms of engaging in such behaviour regularly), most academic research appears to indicate that erotic spanking is towards the ‘softer’ end of sadomasochistic activities, and that almost all instances of erotic spanking are consensual, enjoyable, and non-problematic. Consequently, treatment for the behaviour is rarely sought.
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.
Alison, L., Santtila, P., Sandnabba, N. K., & Nordling, N. (2001). Sadomasochistically oriented behavior: Diversity in practice and meaning. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 30, 1–12.
Arndt, W. B., Jr. (1991). Gender Disorders and the Paraphilias. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Breslow, N., Evans, L., & Langley, J. (1985). On the prevalence of roles of females in the sadomasochistic subculture: Report of an empirical study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 14, 303–317.
Kahr, B. (2007). Sex and the Psyche. London: Allen Lane (Penguin Books).
Love, B. (2001). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. London: Greenwich Editions.
Markham, J. (2005). Consensual Spanking. London: Adlibbed Ltd
Moser, C., & Levitt, E. E. (1987). An exploratory descriptive study of a sadomasochistically oriented sample. Journal of Sex Research, 23, 322–337.
Rebecca F. Plante (2006). Sexual spanking, the self, and the construction of deviance. Journal of Homosexuality, 50 (2–3), 59-79.
Wiederman, M. W. (2003). Paraphilia and fetishism. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 11, 315-321.
Step toe and fun: Another look at trampling fetishism
“I’m a guy and I LOVE being walked on by women wearing high heels. It doesn’t hurt. Is this normal to have women step on my guy parts with high heels?” (Question posted on a Yahoo! website).
In a previous blog I briefly looked at ‘trampling fetishism’. According to a relatively new Wikipedia entry on the behaviour:
“Trampling refers to the sexual activity that involves being trampled underfoot by another person or persons. Trampling is common enough to support a sub-genre of trampling pornography. Because trampling can be used to produce pain, the trampling fetish for some adherents is closely linked to sadomasochistic fetishism. A similar fetish is to imagine themselves as being tiny under another’s feet, or being normal size, but being trampled by a giant person. This is known as ‘giant/giantess fetishism’ or macrophilia. It is not the same as trampling. The most common form of trampling is done by a male or female walking on a male or female submissive and is usually done barefooted, in socks, nylons, or shoes. The trampler will predominantly walk, jump and stomp on the person’s back, chest, stomach, genitalia, face and in some rare instances, the neck”.
If you type ‘trampling fetish’ into Google, lots of YouTube video clips appear instantly. Video clips of trampling have been present on the internet since 1997 courtesy of an number of infamous American tramples such as ‘Daddo’ ‘Kingfish’ and ‘LAF’. If you’re not into the visual side, you can read various forms of trampling fan fiction such as the stories at the Trample and Crushing website.
Since writing my previous blog on this topic, I filmed an interview about a trampling fetishist as part of the television program Forbidden (on which I was the resident psychologist). The television program that I participated in followed the story of a man called Frank O’Brien. Frank recalls his fetish developing during early to mid- adolescence. As a 15-year old teenager, he would trick the girls he knew into stepping on him by inventing games that resulted in him being trampled upon. As the show’s production notes reported:
“[Frank would] invent games to race girls to the door of his cubby house and have them wrestle or sit on him in the process. In the backyard pool he’d encourage them to step on him underwater. Ever since he can remember Frank has wanted to get under a girl’s foot…You could say Frank gets a ‘kick’ out of it. And among friends Frank is known simply as ‘Step on Me.’ For Frank, there’s nothing finer than having a woman walk all over him”.
By his early thirties Frank’s trampling fetish began to take up more and more of his time. In his social life he started attending as many sadomasochistic shows that he could and he longed and desired dominant mistresses that would help cater for his trampling fetish. The back-story I received about Frank noted that:
“The mistresses he saw early in life largely turned Frank away from the idea of trampling. They were more prostitutes than professional mistresses with an idea of what he really wanted. Back in those days there was no training for mistresses in trampling and this really has only taken off in Australia since the early 2000s. Now there are mistresses who train specifically in trampling”.
According to Frank, Melbourne is the centre of Australia’s BDSM culture and he introduced the Forbidden film crew to the niche trampling community that exists there. Frank’s favourite club is ‘Provocation’ that hosts a monthly fetish social event.
“But his idea of getting down on the dance floor is a little different to most. When Frank gets down, he literally gets down. He has a special mat that he lies on to make the experience slightly more bearable but comfort is not exactly what Frank is looking for. He’ll bring with him a platform that he’ll set up beside his mat; written across it are the words ‘step up here – girls only’. And that’s exactly what Frank wants. He’ll lie there for hours in the club, enjoying the feeling of women trampling him. Some wear stilettos, some are in platform shoes and others go barefooted – he doesn’t discriminate about what kind of footwear is permitted, but generally sharper and more pointy shoes offer greater satisfaction for [him]”.
Frank describes himself naturally submissive and he now has weekly trampling sessions with ‘Mistress Spanklet’ who is Frank’s long-term friend and a Dom-sub ‘play partner’. Frank describes these weekly sessions as his “drug fix” and something he “couldn’t live without”. Despite having some of his bowel removed (and it being dangerous for him for someone to trample on his stomach), he cannot stop it. He now tries to avoid ‘tummy trampling’ but notes that:
“Trampling can be on any part of the body, including the more sensitive regions of the face, throat and genitalia. [He] enjoys cock and ball trampling on a weekly basis with Spanklet. His face, arms and legs are also prime trampling ground in private and in public”.
In fact, Frank claims that he was responsible for the first ever penis trampling photograph on the internet. In 1999, Frank claimed he took the full weight of a woman in sharp red stilettos twisting as hard as she could on his penis. Frank claims the photograph (taken by the woman’s sexual partner) kick-started “the worldwide cock trampling trend”.
There appears to be little academic research on the topic but anecdotal evidence suggests there is (unsurprisingly) an overlap between trampling fetishes and foot fetishes (podophilia) – on which there is quote a lot of academic research given it appears to be the most prevalent type of fetishism. Obviously Frank’s case is extreme and is heavily interwoven into his life. While there appear to be addictive elements to his behaviour, I don’t believe that Frank’s trampling fetish is an addiction. Bizarre and extreme – yes. Addictive – no. But I’m happy to be proved wrong.
Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Further reading
Semple, K. (2009). Bartender, make it a stiletto. New York Times, June 10. Located at:
Sexy Tofu (2012). National Fetish Day: Interview with a trampler. January 20. Located at: http://sexytofu.com/tag/trampling/
Wikipedia (2012). Talk: Crush fetish. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACrush_fetish
Wikipedia (2012). Trampling. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampling
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.
drmarkgriffiths 