Down in the bumps: A brief look at mpreg (male pregnancy) fetishism

A few weeks ago I read an article in The Hornet entitled ‘10 unusual fetishes and their psychology, from sploshing to male pregnancy’ by Daniel Villarreal. The ten fetishes and sexual paraphilias included (in alphabetical order), (i) amputation fetishes (sexual arousal from the thought of being an amputee [apotemnophilia] and/or sexual arousal from individuals who are amputees – although the article featured just one specific type of amputee fetishism – ‘toe amputation’), (ii) emetophilia (sexual arousal from vomiting), (iii) entomophilia (sexual arousal from bugs and insects), (iv) eproctophilia (sexual arousal from flatulence), (v) looning (sexual arousal from balloons), (vi) macrophilia (sexual arousal from giants), (vii) mpreg fetishism (sexual arousal from male pregnancy), (viii) sploshing (sexual arousal from being ‘wet and messy’ [WAM] and also known as ‘wamming’), (ix) ursusagalmatophilia (sexual arousal from teddy bears), and (x) vorarephilia (sexual arousal from the thought of being eaten often shortened to ‘vore’).

I have covered all of these fetishes and paraphilias in previous articles on my blog with the exception of mpreg fetishism (although I have covered female pregnancy fetishes [maieusiophilia], childbirth fetishism, and impregnation fetishism, as well as an article on Couvade Syndrome [whereby the male partners of pregnant women experience empathetic pregnancy-like symptoms including loss of appetite, morning sickness, constipation, etc. but the male knows he is not pregnant]). According to a 2015 Mamiverse article on strange fetishes:

“While most sexual fetishes are driven by men, mpreg enthusiasts are said to include a lot kinky ladies. It stands for ‘male pregnancy’ and this sexy fetish was said to born from the evolution of gay themed fanfiction, and fangirls somehow taking it to the next level”.

Many aspects of male pregnancy have featured in the national news a lot over the past few years including stories on male pregnancy suits, how new medical procedures such as womb transplants could facilitate male pregnancy, and pregnancy among transgender men such as the UK’s first pregnant men Scott Parker and Hayden Cross (who stopped transitioning so that they could start families) and the film about Jason Barker’s pregnancy (A Deal With The Universe). On top of this, male pregnancy has occasionally featured in the world of entertainment, most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pregnancy in the 1994 film Junior (where he gets pregnant as part of a scientific experiment), Billy Crystal’s pregnancy in the 1978 film Rabbit Test, Commander Trip Tucker’s pregnancy in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, the French film A Slightly Pregnant Man (where a taxi driver suddenly discovers he is four months pregnant), the 2017 comedy MamaBoy, and the and an episode in Futurama where the male alien Kif Kroker gets pregnant (‘Kif Gets Knocked Up A Notch’), as well as Israeli reality TV show Manbirth.

Based on what I have read online, mpreg in fan fiction is a popular topic and some of the more considered writing about reasons for writing about male pregnancy comes down to a subversion of gender stereotypes. A couple of the better essays I found were by Slayer McCoy (‘Mysogyny and the fetishization of queer identities in fan fiction’) and Lady Geek Girl (‘Sexualized Saturdays: Male pregnancy in fanfiction’). I didn’t agree with everything that was said but they did at least try to look at some reasons for the growth and fascination in mpreg fan fiction. As Lady Geeky Girl opines:

“There is fetishism that happens in many mpreg stories. Now again, this isn’t all that much weirder than porn that shows pregnant women having sex, but that doesn’t make either of them okay. Both fetishize pregnancy, which can be rather demeaning, and mpreg has even fetishized conception… And of course there is one thing all mpreg fics have in common—the male characters are reduced to their biological functions. A biological function that in reality isn’t even theirs. They are magically or “scientifically” changed to be able to give birth and then the entire focus of the fic is on the fact that they are pregnant. Most mpreg fics make the entire focus of the fic on the pregnancy and rarely have any outside plot, putting the entire focus on this pregnancy and baby. Furthermore, these fics often take away the male character’s very identity as a man, not just because he gets pregnant, but usually everything about the character is feminized in the most stereotypical and sexist way possible”.

A couple of years ago, another article by Villarreal in The Hornet briefly looked at mpreg fetishes and featured five videos of “sexy men pretending to be pregnant” with some pretending to be in labour, while briefly overviewing the niche gay pornography Film911 website who specialize in other fetish areas that I have written about including muscle worship, vore, belly button fetishes (alvinophilia), and various aspects of medical fetishism, as well as mpreg fetishism. None of these videos depict gay sex and all of them feature gay models who would never entertain the idea of having gay sex on film. In his 2019 article, Villarreal claims that:

“For some, MPREG is entirely about emotional closeness and intimacy between men; MPREG videos and art show male couples being very sweet, vulnerable and nurturing, something rarely seen in porn. For others, MPREG remains inherently erotic and sexual as it involves literal daddies and breeding. MPREG fantasies can also bleed over into ‘feeder’ fantasies of men growing large with food. The MPREG fetish also contains a noteworthy gender component that idealizes sexual equality”.

Villarreal claims that “MPREG fetishists have dreamed up the idea of a secret ‘male vagina’ hiding directly in the anus with its own female-like reproductive system, though some MPREG babies actually get delivered through the male urethra. There’s even a fantasy taxonomy known as the ‘omegaverse’ where omega ‘carriers’ are impregnated by alpha or beta ‘seeders’. The fantasy sex can involve ‘knotting’ where the top’s penis gets so engorged that it gets trapped in the bottom until climax, much like with dogs. There’s even a lesbian omegaverse where female alphas have female penises”.

The largest online mpreg community is ‘MPREG Central’ and whose administrator goes under the pseudonym ‘Lyric’. Lyric was interviewed by Villarreal and was quoted as saying:

“There is a culture of people out there who are drawn to that idea – men and women who, on some level, wish men could really become pregnant just like women. Some women like the idea of having their man carry and birth their kids, while some gay men wish they could have kids together with their own bodies. [My own reason for getting into MPreg fetishism was a] fascination for stomachs and bellybuttons [and] feeling drawn to the mystery of pregnancy”.

Academically, there appears to be very little on mpreg fetishism, and what has been published appears to only concentrate on the fan fiction element of mpreg within slash fiction (i.e., a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex). In a 2018 book chapter by Kristina Busse and Alexis Lothian entitled ‘A history of slash sexualities: Debating queer sex, gay politics and media fan cultures’ (in The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality), there is a section on ‘queerer, kinkier worlds exploring desire’ where MPreg is briefly mentioned but not expanded upon:

“The Fanlore entry for ‘kink’ notes that the term ‘usually refers to various non-normative sexual practices or desires, such as voyeurism, fetishism, and the many activities included under the BDSM umbrella’…Fans may also ‘refer to other, non-sexual preferences as ‘kinks’ meaning particular imagery, story-tropes, or elements that they enjoy so much they are worth considerable effort to find and collect’…Within this frame mpreg and domestic romance become ‘kinks’ whose preference ranks on the same order as love for fiction featuring rope bondage, sexual slavery or water sports”.

Christina Yatrakis wrote a 2013 thesis on fan fiction and again mentioned mpreg in relation to it being a new development among fan fiction writers:

“Within slash communities, new norms or ways of writing have emerged that are widely accepted without much question. Two such creations are male pregnancies (mpreg) and women with male reproductive parts (G!P), either permanently or in lieu of periods. While not all slash readers enjoy, or even accept, these mystical deviations, a subsection of slash producers and consumers have coalesced around these biological anomalies. While there is no record of when such narrative devices first emerged or became common knowledge in different fandoms and online communities, they are no longer only posted on fetish or kink sites. One explanation is that they came from fandoms with supernatural source texts, i.e. Harry Potter or Star Trek. Within a supernatural context, both of these tools can make sense and through their continued reproduction in supernatural fanfics they could have become accepted and spread throughout different fandoms. Additionally, their popularity could be explained by the prevalence of heterosexual girls writing slash fan fiction. By allowing one partner of a same-sex relationship to have natural reproductive abilities, heterosexual female authors can still act out relationship fantasies with childbearing remaining a natural option”.

Kristina Busse also had a chapter on fan fiction in Anne Jamison’s 2013 book Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World. She noted that:

“Mpregs come in all shapes and sizes and, as a result, can fulfil a vast variety of fan desires: a romantic need to create a love child between male lovers, an interest in pregnancy’s emotional and physical fallout on a partnership, or even a fascination with the horrors of forced breeding…mpreg allows a female writer to play out themes of female bodies, concerns of gender in relationships, and issues of reproduction. And she can interrogate all these ideas in a setting that allows for a certain emotional distance by divorcing the pregnancy from the female body. At the same time, one of the criticisms of mpreg is that it often replicates rather than critiques the portrayal of women by embracing stereotypical gender roles”.

Based on my own brief research into the topic, there doesn’t appear to be any empirical evidence as to the popularity or prevalence of individuals’ involvement in mpreg fetishism. Reading about mpreg doesn’t itself mean that readers have a fetish concerning it although membership of online forums suggest small but dedicated communities that love all things mpreg.

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

Further reading

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

Busse, K. (2013). Pon Farr, mpreg, bonds, and the rise of the omegaverse. In A. Jamison (Ed.), Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World (pp. 316-322). BenBella Books.

Busse, K. & Lothian, A. (2018). A history of slash sexualities: Debating queer sex, gay politics and media fan cultures. In: Smith, C., Attwood, F. & McNair, B. (Eds.). The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality. Oxford: Routledge

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

Lady Geek Girl (2012). Sexualized Saturdays: Male pregnancy in fanfiction. October 13. Located at: https://ladygeekgirl.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/sexualized-saturdays-male-pregnancy-in-fanfiction/

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

Mamiverse (2015). 10 kinds of sexual fetishism that make you say WTF? April 12. Located at: http://mamiverse.com/crazy-forms-of-fetishism-90424/7/

McCoy, S. (2016). Mysogyny and the fetishization of queer identities in fan fiction. WattPad.com. Located at: https://www.wattpad.com/692573853-misogyny-and-the-fetishization-of-queer-identities/page/8

Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S. & Jannini, E.A. (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Research, 19, 432-437.

Villarreal, D. (2016). 5 videos of sexy men pretending to be pregnant. The Hornet, April 28. Located at: https://hornet.com/stories/5-videos-of-sexy-men-pretending-to-be-pregnant/

Villarreal, D. (2019). 10 unusual fetishes and their psychology, from sploshing to male pregnancy. The Hornet, March 19. Located at: https://hornet.com/stories/10-unusual-fetishes/

Yatrakis, C. (2013). Fan fiction, fandoms, and literature: or, why it’s time to pay attention to fan fiction. College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 145. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/145

Having your cake (but not eating it): A brief look at ‘cake-sitting’ fetishes

“Imagine, a beautiful girl with long silky hair and a seductive expression. She’s standing over a delicious-looking cake. She runs her finger through the frosting. Then after slowly licking it off, she turns around suddenly and sits on the cake. This might sound like a confusing dream, or possibly a nightmare if you’re a baker, but it’s actually a very specific fetish that the internet has given a voice: cake. Cake sitting is a simple pursuit. In fact, I’ve already described the whole thing. A woman, clothed or not, walks up to a cake, and then sits on it. That’s it. Sitting. As you might expect, cake sitting porn is typically a video, sometimes completely innocuous and perfectly suitable for the stuffy YouTube standards. A few feature unclothed women, and it does seem to always feature women, but the squishing and the mess are the primary focus of cake sitting” (from the article ‘The sexy fetish of cake sitting’, (IX) Daily)

Back in 2015, a homemade videotape was obtained by the New York Post showing Father George Passias, a high-ranking Greek Orthodox priest at Washington Heights (in New York), with a younger woman from Peru (Ethel Bouzalas) who voluntarily was caught on camera sitting on cakes to satisfy the priest’s ‘cake-sitting fetish’. Following the publication of the tape by the New York Post, Passias was suspended for having the affair with Bouzalaz. Father Passias (who was married at the time) was having an affair with Bouzalas, his assistant and a parish-school principal. They had allegedly been having an affair for years and it was Passias who baptized Bouzalaz just before her wedding. According to an article in GQ:

“In one scene, the bearded cleric, wearing only a white T-shirt, watches his long-haired brunette lover plant her thong-clad bottom on a piece of banana bread wrapped in cellophane. Bouzalas, wearing stiletto heels, oddly wiggles on the loaf until it is flattened — apparently a fetish known as “cake crush” or “cake sitting…In another video clip, the pretty Peruvian rubs her feet on the priest’s face as they lie under a mirrored ceiling and she records his ecstasy at the encounter. In another tape, the priest performs oral sex on his lover while she is still clad in sheer pantyhose”.

According to the online Urban Dictionary, cake-sitting is:

“A fairly new and quite trendy sexual fetish depicting females sitting on their birthday cakes It’s quite the logical combo of ‘wet and messy’ with the food crush fetish. While it shares some similarities with cake fart fetishism, cake sitting does NOT necessarily involve passing of wind or a deliberate discharge of any other bodily fluids into said cake. In recent years it’s become quite the fad in-vogue in Hollywood with Christina Aguilera being the latest and most famous persona to cake-sit, posing for ‘OUT’ magazine”.

The fetish was also featured in a Bustle article ‘8 sexual fetishes you didn’t know existed’ as well as noting the related “cake-farting wherein people literally fart into a cake:

An interesting story about cake-sitting appeared in Refinery 29’s article ‘9 surprisingly delightful photos of a sexual fetish you never knew existed’. The article reported:

“When the founders of Bompass & Parr first opened their London-based jelly confectionary and food-design studio, they were approached with a very specific and unexpected request. One of the first calls [they] got was an inquiry about whether we catered for splosh parties co-founder Sam Bompas. Innocently, [Bompas & Parr] looked online to see what this might involve, and [they found] a steamy scene were folks get turned on by sitting in puddles of baked beans. They didn’t end up catering that event, but Bompas said that he was intrigued by the idea. And nearly a decade after that first inquiry, Bompas & Parr hosted its very first sploshing party – or, more specifically, its first cake-sitting party. After an open call for participants was broadcast through social media, the Bompas & Parr creative team whipped up a variety of elaborate cakes and jellies for the gathering. Photographer Jo Duck was there to interview the participants and capture the moment when they pushed their fully naked bodies into their respective desserts”.

The Refinery 29 article interviewed dominatrix Mistress Shae Flanigan (“BDSM educator and alternative lifestyle coach”) to get her insight into cake-sitting fetishes. She began by talking about ‘sploshing’ and ‘wet and messy fetishism’, both of which I wrote about in a previous blog). She was reported as saying:

“At its most basic, sploshing is sensation play with food. It falls under the more broad type of fetish known as wet and messy play, or W.A.M. Partners may use all types of different foods and drinks (with different textures and temperatures) to engage each other’s senses. Those who enjoy cake-sitting, which is a subcategory of sploshing, specifically use cakes and other types of desserts in their sensation play. So although all sploshers are not cake-sitters, the name of the game remains stimulation through sensation — and what a sensation it is”.

In the same article, Sam Bompas also added: “When a freshly chilled cake first touches your behind, you can’t help but let off a range of squeamish noises. Also, the surprisingly satisfying sound of a bum squashing a meringue is one sound I never thought I would come across, nor will I ever forget.” My own research into the topic confirms there is a niche market for cake-sitting such as bespoke videos at sites like Pornhub (please note that if you click on the link, the material is of a sexually explicit nature).

As far as I am aware (and as I noted in my previous blog on ‘wet and messy’ [WAM] fetishism), there has been no empirical or clinical research published concerning WAM fetishes. Dr. Katharine Gates in her 2000 book Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex notes that individuals who are into WAM fetishes derive sexual arousal from substances that are deliberately and generously applied onto their (or others’) naked skin, predominantly the face, or onto people’s clothes while they are still wearing them. However, cake-sitting was not specifically mentioned. As with many other fetishes I’ve examined over the years, I can’t ever seeing the topic being an area for scientific research (but always happy to be proved wrong).

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

Further reading

Coughlin, S. (2016). 9 surprisingly delightful photos of a sexual fetish you never knew existed. Refinery 29, November 16. Located at: http://www.refinery29.uk/2016/11/130384/sploshing-body-parts-fetish-butt-pictures#slide

Courtois, C. (2012). The sexy fetish of cake sitting. (IX) Daily, November 12. Located at: http://www.ixdaily.com/grind/12ea3c0352fd6e1956e76f6b5321b753287b84a0

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

Moore, J. (2015). Orthodox priest suspended for making kinky “cake sitting” porn tapes with his school principal. GQ, October 5. Located: https://www.gq.com/story/orthodox-priest-suspended-for-making-kinky-cake-sitting-porn-tapes-with-his-school-principal

New York Post (2015). Priest’s ‘cake sitting’ porn fetish. October 6. Located at: https://nypost.com/video/priests-cake-sitting-porn-fetish/

Weiss, S. (2016). 8 sexual fetishes you didn’t know existed. Bustle, December 2. Located at: https://www.bustle.com/articles/197560-8-sexual-fetishes-you-didnt-know-existed

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

Wikipedia (2013). Wet and messy fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_and_messy_fetishism

WAM, bang, thankyou mam: A brief look at ‘wet and messy’ fetishes

In a previous blog, I briefly looked at salirophilia – sometimes called saliromania – a sexual paraphilia in which individuals experience sexual arousal from soiling or disheveling the object of their desire (typically an attractive person). I noted in that blog that salirophilia is related to other fetishes and paraphilias such as ‘sploshing’ (deriving sexual pleasure from wet substances – but not bodily fluids – being deliberately and generously applied to either naked or scantily clad individuals) and sometimes referred to as ‘wet and messy’ (WAM) fetishism or ‘wamplay’. The word ‘sploshing’ is thought to have been derived from the UK-based fetish magazine Splosh! that began publishing in 1989, ran for 40 issues, and featured stories and photographs of women is messy situations.

In 2005, ‘wamplay’ made the news here in the UK when Bernard Bertola, a teacher from Halifax in West Yorkshire was given a two-year conditional registration order for searching for WAM-related terms on one of the school computers where he worked. As an article by Brian Coates in the Halifax Evening Courier noted:

“A school’s former head of IT has been disciplined for watching bizarre internet porn where women were covered in beans, spaghetti, pies and trifles. Bernard Bertola, who taught for nearly 20 years at Hipperholme and Lightcliffe High School, was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct by the General Teaching Council. He was given a two-year conditional registration order, which means he can remain on the register of teachers but must adhere to conditions. Bertola used a school computer to view Internet sites such as ‘Messy and Wet’, ‘Gunge Tank’’ and ‘Messy Mania’…The council said he had knowingly accessed sites inappropriate for a school environment. ‘If he hadn’t expected sexual images you would not expect to see words such as ‘sexy blonde actress gets pie after pie’, said presenting officer Bradley Albuery. An IT manager had spotted Bertola viewing food fetish websites in June 2003 from a monitoring computer in another room”.

Interestingly, this news story also mentions Bertola’s viewing of food fetish sites. Food fetishes and paraphilias (i.e., sitophilia) are different from wamplay (and was a topic I examined in a previous blog). However, there are clearly behavioural (and possibly psychological) overlaps between the two fetishistic behaviours.

As far as I am aware, there has been no empirical or clinical research published concerning WAM fetishes. Dr. Katharine Gates in her 2000 book Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex notes that individuals who are into WAM fetishes derive sexual arousal from substances that are deliberately and generously applied onto their (or others’) naked skin, predominantly the face, or onto people’s clothes while they are still wearing them. According to the Wikipedia entry on WAM fetishes, the messy substances typically used in such encounters include various foodstuffs (custard, ice cream, ketchup, whipped cream, baked beans, liquid puddings, chocolate sauce, peanut butter, cake batter, etc.), drinking beverages (e.g., milk, fruit juices, beers, etc.) and/or other non-foodstuffs (e.g., shaving foam, mud, paint, oil, gunge, slime, Japanese style lotion, etc.). There are many other substances (mostly foodstuffs) that I have come across being mentioned and/or used on other WAM websites including honey, marshmellow spread, chocolate spread, mousses (edible and non-edible), jelly, meringue, lard, margarine, and butter.

An important thing to note in relation to WAM fetishes is that they do not involve body fluids as such bodily substances are part of other distinct sexual paraphilias such as coprophilia (faeces), urophilia (urine), lactophilia (breast milk), menohilia (menstruated blood), and emetophilia (vomit). The Wikipedia entry also notes:

“Videos of the fetish made by both fans and companies can be seen frequently on YouTube. Some of these videos are flagged, but most of them remain available despite the sexual undertones, mainly because a large majority of wet and messy videos on the site do not include nudity and are therefore safe for all audiences to view”.

I also came across an online posting that featured lots of information about lots of sexual fetishes and paraphilias that included some information on ‘wamming’ that I have not come across anywhere else. I reproduce it here but cannot vouch for the veracity of the information as there are no supporting references (however, the information had good face validity which is why I thought I would include it in this blog):

“Body painting, whipped cream licking, and food fighting are milder forms of wamming. The goal is usually to find common household items that are slippery, edible, and don’t stain or sting the skin. Jello stains, for example, while pudding doesn’t. Margarine is better than butter, for example, because butter and milk products stink on the skin. Alcohol and sugar products should be kept away from the vaginal area. Trash bags or dropcloths are usually placed on the floor, and shaved pubic hair is often a prerequisite. Wamming can be done with one sexual partner at a time or in orgy fashion, although most wammers prefer one partner at a time. The appeal is that it stimulates all five senses at the same time”.

The Seattle-based journalist Dan Savage who used to have a newspaper column related to strange sexual behaviour (and who I mentioned in previous blogs on pregnancy fetishism and sexual urtication) also briefly covered WAM-related sexual behaviour in a letter he was sent by one of his readers. The letter read:

“My roommate uses condiments to lubricate his penis when he beats off. He tries to be sneaky when he takes mayonnaise or ketchup out of the kitchen, but I’ve seen him do it. When he does, a rhythmic slurping sound can soon be heard over the radio that he only turns up loud when he beats off. I am seriously disgusted because he puts the condiments back into the refrigerator when he’s finished…How do I make him stop?”

Savage’s reply was hardly the most serious, but it did at least acknowledge that this sort of behaviour appears to be one of a WAM fetishist as he replied:

“If you just want to make him stop, SS, I suggest you empty a bottle of Tabasco sauce into the bottle of ketchup in your fridge, or a few tubes of BenGay into your mayonnaise. That will put a stop to his condiment abuse. Or you can be a man about it…and tell him to go buy some actual lube or, if he’s a wet-and-messy fetishist, suggest that he buy himself play-time-only condiments and keep ’em in a small fridge in his room”.

Whether WAM fetishes ever become the subject of serious academic research is debatable (probably not) but that doesn’t mean they are not of psychological interest. As with most fetishistic behaviours, my guess is that most wammers’ behaviour will have been reinforced via classical and/or operant conditioning experienced in childhood or adolescence. I would be also interested to know what other fetishistic behaviours co-occur with sploshing (e.g., sitophilia, salirophilia).

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

Further reading

Caotes, B. (2005). Teachers naked women and beans. Halifax Evening Courier, February 4. Located at: http://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/news/local/teacher-s-naked-women-and-beans-1-1959014

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

Savage, D. (2004). Savage Love: With a Bang. The Stranger, September 9. Located at: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/savage-love/Content?oid=19248

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

Wikipedia (2013). Wet and messy fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_and_messy_fetishism

Glued to the scene: A brief look at ‘stuck fetishism’

“[There] is a natural or unexpected form of bondage where girls step into cement, wander into spider webs or sink into quicksand. Often girls find themselves in perilous or humiliating situations like being in danger of sinking under quicksand or unable to stop the advances of a horny teenager after having stepped into superglue” (Weird and Sexy website).

“I was chatting via email with a friend of mine and we both agreed on the idea of being glue into and trapped in sexy clothing would be a very hot thing to do. A pair of very high heel patent leather boots for example. Certainly it would get me past my midnight witching hour with my latex panties. Imagine the thick gelatinous glue being poured into my latex catsuit and being made to put it on…anyway we’re still trying to figure out what glue would work well, enough to trap but nothing that would last forever” (Doll’s Realm website).

One of the strangest fetishes that I have come across is ‘stuck fetishism’ that comprises individuals deriving sexual pleasure and arousal from other individuals and/or themselves being immobilized in some way in a ‘sticky situation’ (either literally or metaphorically). It was while I was researching a previous blog on three other sexual paraphilias – claustrophilia (deriving sexual arousal from being confined in small places) taphephilia, (deriving arousal from being buried alive) and wamming/sploshing (deriving sexual arousal from wet and /or messy [WAM] situations) – that I first encountered online references to stuck fetishes and came across the quotes that opened today’s blog. According to an article on ‘stuck fetishism’ in the Nation Master online encyclopedia, not only does the fetish involve immobilization, but sexual arousal is also gained from the individual struggling to escape from the situation. There may be elements of both sexual sadism (and domination) and sexual masochism (bondage and submission) in these scenarios, but the primary focus of the arousal is actually being stuck and/or trapped. The Nation Master article also states:

“Often a certain body part is the focus of such situations, the most common being the feet, although the hands, buttocks, or even ‘full-body’ situations are also quite popular. Other focuses may exist, such as when the subject is wearing a certain article of clothing; certain types of shoes (e.g., high heels) or hosiery are popular examples. The immobilization can involve an object. One form of this is arousal over vehicles that are stuck in mud. There is still a human element since there is a driver at the controls. Some stuck fetishists like to get stuck themselves, while some like to see other people get stuck. Some stuck fetishists enjoy either situation…An overlap between fetishes [bondage, WAM] doesn’t necessarily imply that a person who likes one also likes the other one, however”.

The article also claimed (without any supporting empirical evidence) that stuck fetishists prefer specific situations above all others, and that it typically involves one of the following scenarios:

• Sticky substance immobilization fetish: Here, the individual is rendered immobile and gains sexual arousal from being in direct contact with real sticky or ‘gooey’ substance such as glues (e.g., superglue), melted candy, chewing gum, tar, or is rendered immobile from a fictional organic substance (such as being stuck in a giant spider web).
• Non-sticky substance immobilization fetish: Here the individual is rendered immobile and derives sexual arousal from a substance that is not sticky but stops the individual from being able to move such as quicksand, mud and cement.
• Situational immobilization fetish: Here, the individual is rendered immobile and gains sexual arousal from being confined and/or wedged in a narrow space.
• Perceived situational immobilization fetish: Here, the individual is rendered immobile and gains sexual arousal from a perception that they are confined and/or wedged in a narrow space (e.g., the individual is hypnotized into thinking they are stuck and/or immobile).
• Stuck clothing fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from something that is stuck to the individual’s body (e.g., a shoe, a piece of clothing, a whole clothing outfit, fetish outfits). Such stuck fetishes may overlap with paraphilic transvestism, rubber fetishes, Furry Fandom outfits, and ‘costume play’ more generally.
• Stuck transport fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from being stuck in (or on) a particular form of transport (e.g., a car stuck in a muddy field, a tube train stuck in a tunnel, a bus stuck at the bottom of an icy hill, etc.).
• Stuck transformation fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from being stuck in a particular persona as part of a transformation fetish (that I covered in-depth in a previous blog).
• Stuck multi-person fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from being stuck in a situation with one or more other individuals (e.g., two are more people stuck in the same tight space, two people trapped inside a horse costume).
• Stuck conjoinment fetish: Here, the individual gains sexual arousal from a fantasy where separate individuals’ bodies have been merged or fused.

These fetishes while specific may not be mutually exclusive, and some stuck fetishists may gain sexual arousal from more than one of these scenarios, and in some instances the scenarios might be confined (e.g., being stuck inside a broken down car). The Nation Master article also claims:

“There are many obstacles inherent in realizing such ‘sticky situations’ among fetishists. Although ‘surprise’ and ‘authenticity’ are usually traits that are highly sought after, they are difficult to attain in reality. Surprising an unknowing and possibly unwilling individual raises obvious ethical questions. Authenticity is difficult to attain because the substances involved are often expensive and hard to clean up, as well as being potentially dangerous (tar, for example). These issues, coupled with the fact the stuck fetish is still fairly obscure with a relatively small number of (mostly male) participants, means that the online community relies heavily upon fictional stories and pictures created within the community and occasionally media culled from popular culture and other outside sources”.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that there is no scientific research on the topic of stuck fetishism so the claims made by the Nation Master article that it is a mainly male-based fetish and “obscure” cannot be verified (although both assertions have good face validity and could be argued to be commonsense based on what we know about other similar fetishes). However, the fetish does appear to exist as evidenced by dedicated websites and forums such as the Stuck Head First website, the Stuck and Struggle website, and The Sticky Review website, as well as online discussions on topics such as ‘glue bondage’ at websites such as the Alt Bondage Narkive and The Bound Forum. Given the inherent medical dangers inherent in some of the scenarios (such as playing with superglue or cement), the most likely way of case studies entering the academic literature will be in the form of medical papers reporting on cases where something untoward and/or life-threatening occurs.

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

Further reading

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

Nation Master (2013). Stuck fetishism. Located at: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Stuck-Fetishism

Wikipedia (2013). Wet and messy fetishism. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_and_messy_fetishism

Rude food? A beginner’s guide to sitophilia

There has long been an association between eating and sexual behaviour on many different levels. Eating and sex are both basic human needs and sometimes interact more directly. Many would also agree that eating (in and of itself) can be a sensual activity. There are also some foods that are considered to be aphrodisiacs. For example, foodstuffs such as oysters and chocolate are considered to have aphrodisiac properties (even if there is a lack of empirical evidence). The important factor is that if people believe the food in question has such arousing properties then there is likely to be some kind of a placebo effect.

In previous blogs I have looked at both feederism (in which sexual arousal and gratification is stimulated through a person gaining body fat) and vorarephilia (in which people are sexually aroused by the idea of being eaten, eating another person, or observing this process for sexual gratification). Another eating-related sexual behaviour is sitophilia. This is a sexual paraphilia in which the individual has an erotic attraction to (and derives sexual arousal from) food. Sitophilia can also include sexual arousal caused by erotic situations involving food. This may comprise many different types of activity including those who:

• Eat one particular foodstuff from the body of another (e.g., licking chocolate mousse off the breasts of a naked partner).
• Eat a variety of foods or a whole meal off somebody’s naked body (such as the Japanese practice of nyotaimori – see below).
• Use a foodstuff to enhance a particular sexual act (e.g., sucking on a lime before engaging in oral sex to swell the taste buds and create more sensitivity when licking genital tissue). This could also technically involve the use of a foodstuff to enhance genital lubrication (e.g., use of olive oil).
• Use food as a method of control and/or flagellation in sadomasochistic activity (e.g., the throwing of oranges at the buttocks as a from of sexual humiliation or punishment). Dominant partners can also choose to control their submissive partner’s eating habits and food intake as a regular part of their sex play. Some dominant individuals will restrain their submissive partner’s hands, and order them to eat from a dish on the floor. This can be a highly sexually charged situation for those into erotic humiliation.
• Use food as a masturbatory aid. This may include males hollowing out foodstuffs (such as a pumpkin) into which they simulate intercourse, and females using phallic shaped foods as a penis substitute (e.g., cucumbers).
• Drink bodily fluids (such as semen) after it has been blended into other foods (e.g., mashed potato) following masturbation.
• Drink bodily fluids as part of another drink (e.g., adding ice cubes made of semen to a pina colada where the saltiness of the semen counteracts the sweetness of pineapple).
• Use food as an enhancement to sexual intercourse (e.g., the use of a slitted plum placed over an erect penis and then inserted into a partner’s vagina to add volume and pressure to the sexual act for both partners.
• Use food to aid sexual stimulation and erotic pleasure (e.g., the insertion of grapes into the rectum). This latter type of act also includes particular foodstuffs such as the insertion of ginger into the rectum (called ‘figging’ – check it out on Wikipedia if you find this hard to believe). The use of ginger has also been documented as being inserted into the vagina and urethral opening.

There are also various sub-types of sitophilia (such as botulinonia that involves the sexual use of sausages). Similarly, as mentioned in the list above, those who use various foods as dildo substitute masturbatory aids (e.g., cucumbers, aubergines, carved out melons, butternet squash, etc.) may also be sitophiles.

Sitophilic acts have appeared in popular films and books. The most infamous are probably (i) the lead character Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) in the film American Pie is caught masturbating into a pie after being told that third base (i.e., fellatio) feels like “warm apple pie”, (ii) the sex scene in the film 9½ Weeks where John Gray (Micky Rourke) spoon feeds Elizabeth McGraw (Kim Basinger) various kinds of food while blindfolded, and (iii) the Philip Roth book Portnoy’s Complaint that features detailed depictions of masturbation – the most infamous being the use of a piece of liver steak by the male protagonist (Alexander Portnoy) to masturbate into and which is later served at a family dinner. However, one of the weirdest sitophilic acts I have come across is in Seijun Suzuki’s film Branded to Kill (1967) where the leading man Goro Hanada (Joe Shishido) has a food fetish where he has to sniff boiling rice in order to become sexually excited.

I have also come across descriptions of food orgy parties. These are:

“Organized by individuals where friends bring either an erotic arrangement of food on a dish to share, or food that feels sensuous when rubbed onto a partner and licked off. Afterwards, everyone soaks in a hot tub. There are also all-male games such as ‘Shoot the Cookie’ and ‘Soggy Biscuit’ where males stand in a circle around a cookie and masturbate. The rule dictates that the last one who ejaculates on the cookie has to eat it”.

There are also those who use foodstuffs to make the sexual act messier (i.e., “sploshing” – a form of salirophilia) that I briefly examined in a previous blog on salirophilia (in which individuals experience sexual arousal from soiling or disheveling the object of their desire). Sitophilia can also play a part in the activity of ‘food play’ (which doesn’t always have sexual connotations so should not be used synonymously). For instance, nyotaimori and nantaimori (the obscure Japanese practice of ‘female body presentation’ and ‘male body presentation’ respectively) is not usually seen as either fetishistic or paraphilic for those who participate. This practice is also known as “body sushi” and involves people eating food from the body of a naked person). Some websites (such as Muki’s Kitchen) have turned such behaviour into an art form.

Some reports claim that the person covered in food has to learn to withstand the coldness of the food and is trained to lie and keep still for hours while those around eat off their body. However, the Guardian journalist Julie Bindel who attended a nyotaimori platter in London says that the women she ate off were models with no prior training.

I have yet to read a single academic or clinical paper that has been published on the topic although there is a lot of online activity surrounding those who get sexually aroused by food (check out the links in the ‘Further reading’ section). For instance, here is one story I found from a homosexual man into both feederism and sitophilia.

“I love to eat. I am a chubby guy, 5’4″ and currently 200 lbs. I attempt to maintain around 200 lbs if I can manage it. Along with sitophilia I am also attracted to other chubby guys. Well I get extremely turned on by food. I love the look of food, the smell of food, the taste of food. The act of eating food also is such a turn on. Feeling food in my mouth, chewing it and the act of swallowing food and feeling it slide down to my stomach gets me totally aroused. I love to indulge in buffets. Going to a buffet is better than any porn I could ever watch. Usually there are lots of chubby men there for me to watch and satisfy my chubby guy fetish too. I have spent several hours at a buffet indulging. I usually walk around half hard the whole time. In private I love to include food in sex. Just earlier I had a piece of chocolate cheescake. It was a very rich, dense and decadent cheescake. I took it out of the fridge and took it into my bedroom. I got naked and laid on the bed. My cock was instantly hard. I took the slice of cheesecake in one hand and my cock in the other hand. I started to masturbate while slowly tasting the cake. I became so aroused that I began to furiously pound my cock and I just stuffed the whole piece of cheesecake into my mouth. It was a huge piece and I could almost not fit it all in. My mouth was stuffed and my cheeks puffed out totally filled with the cheesecake. As I chewed and felt the creamy chocolate cheesecake in my mouth, I felt my arousal build and that familiar sensation of being close to an orgasm. I pounded my cock even harder and then I took one swallow…feeling the bit of cheesecake sliding down my throat brought me just to the edge of orgasm. I could not stand it any longer. I began to chew and swallow all of the cheesecake and I erupted in a very powerful and intense orgasm”

Here are two confessions from female sitophiles. They wrote:

Extract 1: “Something about watching a man eat turns me on like crazy. I like to cook for men just so I can watch them eat my food. When men eat, they attack, and I find it incredibly sexy. If any professional might know the reason for this, I would greatly appreciate your insight. It is not getting in the way of my everyday life, it is just something that gets me going”.

Extract 2: “I used to be bulimic in high school (that’s when I realized I like sticking my fingers in food) and now I’m on a strict diet and my sitophilia is worse than ever! I love watching people eat fatty foods and I want to know what sploshing is like. I lay awake at night fantasizing about being covered in cake batter or spaghetti-o’s and rubbing it onto my skin. I’ve been weird about food since my eating disorder, but sitophilia was not in my vocabulary until very recently”.

Despite such online confessions, sitophilia appears to be one of many paraphilias that have passed the academic and clinical world by. This may be because food play is quite common among ‘normal’ and ‘experimental’ sex, and/or may be seen as academically and/or clinically trivial.

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

Further reading

Bindel, J. (2009). ‘I am about to eat sushi off a naked woman’s body’. The Guardian, February 12. Located at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/12/nyotaimori-eating-sushi-naked-woman

Sense and Sensuality Website (Education and Discussion website). Located at: http://sensesensuality.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/sex-ed-paraphilia-sitophilia.html?zx=879c2fb6531ed60d

Spiritual BDSM (2011). What is sitophilia? December 6, Located at: http://www.spiritualbdsm.com/2011/12/what-is-sitophilia.html?zx=69b8151a4d2896e3

Messing around: A beginner’s guide to salirophilia and mysophilia

Salirophilia – sometimes called saliromania – is a paraphiic sexual fetish in which individuals experience sexual arousal from soiling or disheveling the object of their desire (typically an attractive person). Salirophilic behaviour may include a range of activities such as tearing or damaging the desired person’s clothing, covering them in mud or filth, or messing their hair or makeup. The fetish never involves harming or injuring the person in any way, only messing up how they look in some way, shape or form. The fetish was thought to be mainly heterosexual in origin although a 1982 book (Human Sexuality, by James McCary and Stephen McCary) said that it was known to occur within same sex relationships.

It is sometimes related to other fetishes and paraphilias including urophilia (deriving sexual pleasure from urine), coprophilia (deriving sexual pleasure faeces), mysophilia (deriving sexual pleasure from filth), sploshing (deriving sexual pleasure from wet substances – but not bodily fluids – being deliberately and generously applied to either naked or scantily clad individuals, and sometimes referred to as ‘wet and messy’ fetishism), bukkake (the act of many men ejaculating over a man or women simultaneously; there are also variations of this where men ejaculate over photographs and pictures and referred to as ‘face painting), and omorashi (deriving sexual pleasure from having a full bladder and/or feeling sexually attracted to someone else who has a full bladder). Salirophilia may also extends to other areas such a forcing a sexual partner to wear torn or poorly fitting clothing that make the person look more unattractive.

Other variations of the fetish may also include people become sexually aroused from acts of vandalism and defacement of statues, photos of attractive people (including celebrities). Videos of individuals ejaculating over celebrity photographs are known as “tributes” within the fetish community.

As far as I have been able to establish, there is not a single piece of empirical research directly on salirophilia. Not even a single case study. All the information, I have compiled in this blog comes from online sources and books on sexuality and sexual paraphilias (where salirophilia is only mentioned in passing, if mentioned at all). Dr. Ian Kerner, a New York City sex therapist, says that salirophilia often involves domination and submission fantasies. McCary and McCary noted that although salirophilia has been described as a category separate from sexual sadism, they claim that most cases of saliromania would meet the criteria for sexual sadism, as described in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. However, as Dr Joel Milner, Dr Cynthia Dopke, and Dr Julie Crouch note in a 2008 review of paraphilias not otherwise specified, it is unclear whether cases exist in which the salirophilic behavior (e.g., the act of damaging clothing) is distinct from a focus on the suffering and humiliation of the sexual partner. They also noted that the extent of overlap of salirophilia with fetishism, bukkake, mysophilia, urophilia, and coprophilia is unknown.

Like salirophilia, there is little empirical data on mysophilia. As mentioned above, mysiophiliacs derive sexual pleasure from filth and unclean items such as soiled knickers (but may also include related activities such as sexual arousal from seeing people wearing the same clothes for days or weeks on end). Magazines such as the Penthouse Forum: The International Journal of Human Relations has (for many years) contained classified advertisements for soiled women’s underwear for mysophiliacs to buy. According to Professor John Money, this focus may involve the “smelling, chewing or other-wise utilizing sweaty or soiled clothing or articles of menstrual hygiene”.  Back in the late 1940s, the American psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Karpman put forward a number of psychodynamic speculations on the etiological factors associated with mysophilia in a couple of papers that focused on coprophilia. One of Karpman’s analytic interpretations concerning mysophilia was that it involves a symbolic association of sex with something that is dirty (i.e., bad). He said that the pairing of sex and filth was functional, because any guilt associated with sexual behavior could be washed away.

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 forum 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). Their results showed that body part fetishes were most common (33%), followed by objects associated with the body (30%), preferences for other people’s behavior (18%), own behavior (7%), social behavior (7%), and objects unrelated to the body (5%). Feet (and objects associated with feet) were by far the most common fetishes. They also reported that some of the sites featured references to mysophiliacs but that this particular fetish accounted for less than 1% of all fetishes

As with salirophilia, case studies of mysophilia appear hard to come by. In a paper by Dr John White published in a 2007 in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, he examinedevidence of primary, secondary, and collateral paraphilias left at serial murder and sex offender crime scenes. Two of the cases he reported involved mysophilia. In the first case, the offender was engaged in multiple paraphilias including mysophilia, picquerism (stabbing or cutting victims of sexual attacks), and attempted paraphilic rape intended to degrade the victim. In the second case, the offender manifested an even wider range of paraphilias including mysophilia, pogophilia (fascination with women’s buttocks), paedophilia, masochism, and urophilia. In both of these cases, the mysophilic tendencies did not seem to be central to the crimes committed, and mysophilia was clearly part of a much wider range of paraphilic behaviour.

There are also first person accounts of salirophilia and/or mysophilia on the internet. I came across this account (which I have edited down from a much longer posting on a psychology bulleting board:

“First of, let me say I’m not a dangerous or mean person. I really almost never hurt other people, and I really don’t want to. I’ve never really told anyone about this. When I was younger, I don’t know how young exactly, I had kind of unusual sexual fantasies. I think I was 6/7/8/9 [years old]. I don’t really remember. I used to think about them while lying in bed before I was going to sleep. Things I fantasized about, and this is a really hard part to type out for me, is people wearing diapers, people wearing clothes in weird ways, and people that got messy. Please don’t think I’m a sick person or something. If I could change it, I would, although it didn’t really harm anyone. When I got a little older, I think I was 9 or 10, maybe 11, I searched on the internet for people that got messy. I don’t know if that was because of fetish, or just because of normal interest in that. [After that] I mostly watched videos of game shows in which people got messy. Sometimes they were my age, sometimes they were younger, sometimes they were older. Only recently I started to realize that the fantasies I had when I was younger weren’t normal, and that I could have had a fetish. It kind of shocked me. Sometimes, I dream about it. I start watching those videos again. In others, I get messy myself, and in those dreams, I get aroused by that. Did I do anything wrong? Do I need to get help? Am I a bad person? Will this affect the rest of my life badly? I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just really had to tell this somewhere on some moment”.

Treatment for salirophilia and mysophilia is rarely sought unless the condition becomes problematic for the individual in some way. Although the individual may feel compelled to engage in the paraphilic behaviour, anecdotal evidence suggests that the great majority manage to integrate their fetishistic behaviour within their day-to-day life without harm to anyone (including themselves).

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

Further reading

Butcher, Nancy (2003). The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore. New York: Avery.

Holmes, R. M. (2009). Sex Crimes: Patterns and Behavior. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Karpman, B. (1948). Coprophilia: A collective review. Psychoanalytic Review, 35, 253–272.

Karpman, B. (1949). A modern Gulliver: A study in coprophilia. Psychoanalytic Review, 36, 260–282.

McCary, J.L. & McCary, S.P. (1982). McCary’s Human Sexuality (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Milner, J.S. Dopke, C.A. & Crouch, J.L. (2008). Paraphilia not otherwise specified: Psychopathology and Theory In Laws, D.R. & O’Donohue, W.T. (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment (pp. 384-418). New York: Guildford Press.

Money, J. (1986). Lovemaps: Clinical concepts of sexual/erotic health and pathology, paraphilia, and gender transposition in childhood, adolescence, and maturity. New York: Irvington.

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.

White, J.H. (2007). Evidence of primary, secondary, and collateral paraphilias left at serial murder and sex offender crime scenes. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 52, 1194-1201.