What Was I Thinking? (18 March)

Images used for the posts published on this date 

in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023

 

 

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I can't think of anything else to write about -  it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on the same date in years gone by ...

 

 

Onychophilia: Notes on Two Types of Nail Fetish

 

The first thing to note about this post published back in 2019, is that it is - with almost 5000 views - the most viewed post on Torpedo the Ark. 

 

I suspect that's primarily because the post was mentioned by Dr Mark Griffiths on his excellent blog devoted to addictive, obsessive, compulsive and/or extreme behaviours [1], although I like to think the post also warrants attention on its own merit. 

Starting with those fetish figures made by natives of the Congo region of Central Africa, I swiftly moved from wooden figures with rusty nails banged into them for the purposes of witchcraft on to the sharp, long fingernails of beautiful young women and argued that onychophilia deserves to be considered in its own right and not merely seen as a form of hand partialism. 

 

Somewhat controversially perhaps, I also suggested that those who love nails (like those who love hair) are essentially soft-core necrophiles, secretly aroused by death. 

 

The post finished with a discussion of a related (but distinct) fetish, amychophilia - the desire of a masochistic subject to be cruelly scratched by fingernails. 

 

 

The Bear Necessity: Reflections on the Case of Timothy Treadwell

Not all posts are as popular as the one on two types of nail fetish. 

 

This post, for example, from March 2020, didn't even get a hundred views - which arguably speaks to the fact that there far fewer vorarephiles in the world than there are onychophiles (or amongst my readership, at any rate).

But I found the case of Timothy Treadwell interesting; a failed actor turned gonzo naturalist who ended up being eaten by a brown bear - which, as I punned at the time, is a grisly way to meet your end, but not, I think, the most ignoble way to die. I'd certainly rather be killed by a tiger than run over by a car and I would refute the idea that this makes me a disturbed individual harbouring a bizarre death wish.

 

 

Talaria: On the Secularisation of Winged Footwear from Hermes to Jeremy Scott

This post, from 2021 has so far picked up over a thousand views, so that's not too bad. It opens with the Greek god Hermes and closes with the irreverent American fashion designer Jeremy Scott. 

 

Some might characterise this transition from ancient myth to modern pop culture, as going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but I've never been a great defender of the distinction between high and low culture and I rather like the idea that everyone is entitled to wear winged footwear, not just gods and heroes.

 

 

Arborcide in the U. K.

 

Finally, let me briefly defend the post published on March 18th of last year: I thought it was good then and I still think it's good now.

 

However, the number of views it's had - despite the reworked Jamie Reid artwork - suggests that there are precious few dendrophiles checking out the blog; a fact that suprises and disappoints, as I would say Torpedo the Ark is hugely pro-tree and I have repeatedly expressed my support for those writers who recognise that plants are just as philosophically interesting as animals (perhaps more so). 

 

Reforesting, rewilding, and depopulating the UK is pretty much my position: no more roads; no more houses, no more population increase - just natural regeneration of woodland, scrubland, grassland, and wetland all across the country and serious protection afforded to wildlife. Rupert Birkin was right, there's no nicer thought than that of a posthuman future ...       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dr Mark Griffiths is a Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University. To visit his blog and to read his take on the subject of onychophilia, click here. 

 

 

Good Things Come in Small Packages: Notes on Microphilia with Reference to the Case of Tinker Bell

Very Sexy Tinkerbell by CreepingNinjas  

deviantart.com

"It was a girl called Tinker Bell, exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, 

cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. 

She was slightly inclined to embonpoint." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

An anonymous correspondent emails: 

 

As a member of the SW community, I was intrigued to see you close a recent post featuring the Mothra twins by making reference to your own microphilia. I do hope that, as indicated, you intend to say more on this often overlooked form of love. [2]

 

So, not wanting to disappoint a reader (since I have so few), here's a post for him [3] and all other members of the shrinking women community ... [4]   

 

 

II.

Somewhat ironically, it seems that the number of individuals erotically fixated with tiny women and who derive sexual pleasure from fantasies involving such fairy-like figures is increasing in size, just as the number of self-identifying macrophiles begins to shrink. [5]

 

But then, when one starts to investigate the subject, it soon becomes apparent that microphilia has always been present within mainstream art, literature and film - and that it is not something only found at the kinky margins of society. 

 

In order to demonstrate this, I thought it might be fun to examine the case of Tinker Bell ...

 

 

III.

 

As most readers will know, Tinker Bell is a fictional character from J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan (1904) and its later novelisation as Peter and Wendy (1911). She has since established herself as an iconic figure within the Disney universe - where she is often misclassified as a pixie - wearing a bright green strapless mini dress in order to best display her hourglass figure and lovely long limbs.

 

Although some people like to believe that the original animated version of Tinker Bell was modelled after blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe, the primary point of reference was actually the dancer and actress Margaret Kerry who, in 1949, was said by Hollywood insiders to have the World's Most Beautiful Legs. 

 

The key point is that, from the first, Tinker Bell was imagined as a sexually alluring woman in miniature; not a pre-pubescent girl. Thus, there's nothing innocent about foul-mouthed, orgy-loving Tinker Bell [6] and nothing criminally deviant about finding her sexy; microphilia is not a form of paedophilia [7]. 

 

This perhaps explains her broad and continuing appeal. Not only, for example, does she have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but in 2009 she became the smallest waxwork ever to be made by Madame Tussauds, measuring just five-and-a-half inches in height. 

 

Arguably, as I said earlier, this illustrates that whilst microphilia is rooted within the pornographic imagination, it also has a central position within mainstream popular culture and so isn't really a hidden or secret fantasy as some claim; young or old, male or female, queer, kinky or straight, we all love women in miniature (particularly those who, when spanked, sprinkle fairy dust upon our otherwise drab lives).     

 

 

 

Notes

[1] J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, (Hodder & Stoughton, 1911), Ch. III, p. 35. This work can be read free online thanks to Project Gutenberg: click here.

 

[2] The post that my correspondent refers to was published as 'Ravishing a Universe for Love: In Praise of Mothra and the Shobijin' (25 Sept 2022): click here.

 

[3] Although I'm assuming my kinky correspondent is male, it's important to note that there are female microphiles who might, for example, desire to be miniaturised and then sexually pleasured by a normal-sized partner (which might, I suppose, be just as legitimately discussed in terms of macrophilia). 

 

[4] I'd like to make clear at the outset, however, that I'm not an expert in this area and do not wish to be seen as a spokesperson for those with a fetishistic penchant for women of a radically reduced stature whom one might literally hold in the palm of one's hand. The views expressed here are my own and I'm sure some microphiles will object to my focusing on Tinker Bell - a fairy - rather than a real human female in shrunken form - such as Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966); or is Cora Peterson so tiny that even the most devoted or hardcore of microphiles draws the line?   

 

[5] According to Dr Mark Griffith, the go-to academic for information on a wide range of paraphilias, the reason microphilia appears to have increased in popularity over recent years is because of the rise of the internet and social media: 

      "Because the paraphilia is almost totally fantasy-based, much of the material from which microphiles gain their sexual gratification is placed and distributed online. There is a wide range of microphile artwork, photographs, and video on the internet. Applications such as Photoshop are widely used to create collages of fake miniaturized people." 

      See the post published on his website entitled 'Shrink rap: A beginner's guide to microphilia' (9 Nov 2012): click here. 

 

[6] Re Tinker Bell's tendency to sprinkle her speech with expletives, see Peter and Wendy, Ch. III, p. 48 in the edition previously cited, where Barrie writes: "Tink was darting about again, using offensive language". And for the reference to fairy orgies, see Ch. VI, p. 109.         

      I am grateful to Hannah Lucy, writing on her blog - Hannah Lucy's Literary Adventures - for reminding me of these lines. See the post 'Tinker Bell's Disturbing Sexuality' (19 November 2017): click here. As much as I enjoyed this post, however, I couldn't help thinking that Lucy's conclusion - that Tinker Bell is "essentially a lascivious tart" - is a bit harsh. 

 

[7] It is always questionable when one paraphilia is reduced to another, or different forms of kink are confused and conflated. 

      Having said that, Mark Griffith insists that when it comes to microphilia "there are crossovers with other sexually paraphilic behaviours such as sadism and masochism [...] For instance, some male microphilic fantasies involve sexual violence against shrunken women who they hold as a captive and/or prisoner. Here, the microphiles may also be sexually aroused by the fact that the shrunken women may be in a distressed psychological state [...] as a result of being miniaturized". See 'Shrink rap: A beginner's guide to microphilia' (the link to which has previously been given).  

 

Readers might be interested in some of the posts published on Torpedo the Ark discussing macrophilia, i.e., the opposite of microphilia in which the amorous subject derives sexual pleasure from human giants. These posts include: 'In Defence of Giant Lovers' (15 June 2015); 'Bigging Up the Gibson Girl' (23 July 2019); and 'Into the Valley of the Giants' (3 April 2022).

Wood You Believe It? Another Post on Dendrophilia (With Reference to the Case of Humphrey Mackevoy)

Dendrophilia

ALCU (A Little Crazy Universe) 

on tumblr.com

 

 

'I am just back from the woods. My thighs are cold from the touch of bark 

and that instrument of my pleasure is still gently throbbing ...'

 

 

I. 

 

For many men, particularly those who subscribe to slang terms popular within the American porn industry, to have wood simply means that one is sporting a sturdy erection. But for dendrophiles - that is to say, those tree lovers who are sexually attracted to our leafy friends - this verb implies a great deal more. 

 

Rupert Birkin, for example, famously entered into a state of erotic delirium when surrounded by various plants, bushes, and young trees and found nothing more fulfilling than to clasp the silvery trunk of a birch against his naked flesh and feel "its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges" before then ejaculating on the leaves [1].

 

Many readers will of course be familiar with Birkin's case. But I'm guessing that far fewer readers will know the story of Humphrey Mackevoy, as told by John Fortune and John Wells in their 1971 novel, A Melon for Ecstasy ... [2]

 

 

II. 

 

Constructed from fictional newspaper reports, letters, and diary entries by the novel's young male protagonist, A Melon for Ecstasy describes how Humphrey Mackevoy could only become sexually aroused and achieve his satisfaction by penetrating trees in which he has carefully bored a suitable hole to accomodate his erect penis [3] - a tall, slender laburnum being the primary object of his desire.

 

Whilst initially his dendrophilia causes him shame and confusion, he eventually comes to accept and, indeed, feel a certain degree of pride in his perverse form of love - even though it leads to his imprisonment [4].    

 

The book is intended as a satirical depiction of British sexual mores at the time and the manner in which the press sensationalise stories involving illicit sex acts in order to sell papers, whilst at the same time moralising in the name of public decency and family values. 

 

The novel also contains a series of comic sub-plots, involving local naturists keen to know the origin of the mysterious holes and town councillors worried about the damage being caused to trees located in parks and woodlands over which they exercise authority. 

 

However, whilst this book sounds like a fun read, it is, in fact, a profoundly irritating and disappointing work. 

 

Alwyn W. Turner may like to pretend on his Trash Fiction website that A Melon for Ecstasy is a strangely beautiful book of startling genius, containing some stupendous ideas and elegant prose, but he also describes Humphrey's tender embrace of a tree as an act of rape, so I'm not sure we should take anything he says too seriously [5].  

 

For me, Harry Crews is the critic who best identifies the problem with A Melon for Ecstasy. Writing in a review for The New York Times, he asks: "Is there anything so tedious as comic novel that is not serious?" [6] 

 

I don't know if we always need the skull behind the laughter to turn comic fiction into great literature, but, like Crews, I don't much care for books that only sneer and giggle and go for cheap gags. 

 

Ultimately, I feel about A Melon for Ecstasy what D. H. Lawrence felt about Ben Hecht's novel Fantazius Mallare (1922), which includes an illustration by Wallace Smith of the protagonist enjoying coition with a tree: I'm sorry, it didn't thrill me a bit ... [7]

    

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 107-08. 

      And see my post 'Floraphilia Redux' (17 Oct 2016) in which I discuss the case of Rupert Birkin: click here.  

 

[2] John Fortune and John Wells, A Melon for Ecstasy, (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971). 

      Note that there is also a Penguin edition (1973) and, more recently, a Prion Books edition published in their Humour Classics series (2002).

      John Fortune (1939 - 2013) was an English satirist, comedian, writer, and actor, best known for his work with John Bird and Rory Bremner on the TV series Bremner, Bird and Fortune. John Wells (1936 - 1998) was an English actor, writer and satirist; one of the original contributors to Private Eye.

 

[3] Heterosexual non-dendrophiles will of course insist that such a glory hole carved into the body of a tree thirty-three inches from the ground and at just the right angle, is an artificial vagina and is therefore merely a substitute for the real thing (i.e., the female sex organ which they prefer to penetrate). 

      In this manner, they seek to reassure themselves that no one really desires a tree as an object in itself and reaffirm the view that there is only one legitimate orifice in which to place the erect penis and ejaculate. One might remind these people, however, of the old saying popular amongst the Arabs and Turks: One penetrates a woman from duty; a youth for pleasure; and a nonhuman animal or object to experience ecstasy (the title of the novel by Fortune and Wells is a reference to this).  

 

[4] Fifty years later, and the law will still come down hard on those who love trees - or those, such as William Shaw, 22, of Airdrie, Scotland, posing as a dendrophile and simulating sex with a tree in his local park, in broad daylight and in plain sight of passers-by, including a woman walking her dog.             

      Convicted on a charge of public indecency, Shaw was sentenced to five months in jail in February 2010 and told by the judge that his behaviour was disgusting. Shaw was also put on the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years. Readers who are interested can find the full story in The Scotsman (15 Feb 2010): click here. 

      However, they should also see the report on the BBC news website published three months later, in which it is revealed that the Airdrie park flasher won his appeal and not only had his prison sentence quashed and name removed from the SOR, but also had the allegation of dendrophilia struck from the public record. Following his appeal, Shaw was put on a year's probabion and ordered to carry out 150 hours of community service. Click here to read the report in full.

 

[5] To read Turner's review of A Melon for Ecstasy on Trash Fiction, click here.   

[6] Harry Crews, review of A Melon for Ecstasy, in The New York Times (8 Aug 1971): click here.

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath, by Ben Hecht', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 215.

      As Lawrence goes on to explain, a man's coition with a tree might serve as the stuff of comedy, but so too is it - as a form of contact between two alien natures - a deadly serious affair, involving violent struggle as well as sensual delight. By simply turning Humphrey Mackevoy's story into a joke, Fortune and Wells miss an opportunity to tell us something really interesting about paraphilia and the inhuman character of sex. 

      For a further discussion of Lawrence's daimonic dendrophilia and his criticism of Ben Hecht's notorious novel, see my post of 3 Oct 2020: click here. 

 

 

This post is for Dr Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University, who writes a fascinating blog on addictive, obsessional, compulsive and/or extreme behaviours - including a wide variety of paraphilias. His post on dendrophilia can be found by clicking here. 

 

 

Bigging Up the Gibson Girl

Charles Dana Gibson: The Weaker Sex (1903)

I. 

Although - like many Englishmen - I have a great fondness for American women, I was never particularly excited by those turn-of-the-century beauties given us by the illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. 

That is to say, Gibson's Edwardian ideal of femininity - combining slightly old-fashioned or straight-laced elements with more modern aspects - is not really my ideal. I like the slender, youthful features and the way her elegant neck is exposed thanks to the pinned-up (pompadour) hairstyle, but I'm not so keen on the fullness of figure and overly fussy fashions.

From the perspective of sexual politics, the Gibson Girl also leaves something to be desired; she was not quite new enough to be considered a New Woman and didn't fully share the latter's progressive vision of social and political change.

Thus, whilst she may have enjoyed some of the freedoms that the New Woman had campaigned for, she didn't seem to threaten the phallocratic order or wish to usurp traditionally masculine roles. Nor was she about to chain herself to any railings; the Gibson Girl was many things, but a militant suffragette she was not. Ultimately, she enjoyed her privileged life in a Gilded Age. 


II.

There is, however, one aspect of the Gibson Girl that does fascinate; she was sometimes depicted not as a traditionally passive paradigm of womanhood, but, rather, as a sexually dominant and teasing figure who enjoyed humiliating her lovers and making men feel small as she cheerfully crushed them underfoot, or, as we see in the image above, closely examined them in every detail as if they were some kind of inferior specimen or human insect. 

Whether this tells us something about the wilfulness of American women, or Gibson's own perviness, I don't know. But this little-commented upon theme of macrophilia identifiable in his work is surely worthy of further research by those interested either in the history of American illustration or the history of fetishism (or both). 

Although I wouldn't particularly wish to be abused or toyed with by a giantess - and I certainly don't have any desire to crawl inside a cavernous vagina or swallowed whole - I can understand the appeal of a fifty-foot woman and it doesn't surprise me to read that macrophilia is trending on an increasing number of porn sites and that the internet has played a crucial role in helping to develop and popularise this sexual fantasy.

The 18th-century statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke may have supposed it impossible to ever love a giant, but that merely shows the limits (and inherently conservative nature) of his erotic imagination. As does the all-too-predictable view of St. Louis-based clinical psychologist and radio show host Dr. Helen Friedman:

"[Macrophiles] are playing out some old, unresolved psychological issue. Maybe as a child they felt overwhelmed by a dominant mother, or a sadsitic mother. Maybe they were abused. [Macrophilia] is not so much a fetish as a disassociation from reality. It's part of an internal world. The macro's submersion in fantasy serves as a substitute for a more normalized approach to sex. Healthy sexuality is about personal intimacy. It's about feeling good about yourself in a way that expresses caring, and feeling a connection to another person."

This is so laughably ludicrous - almost beyond parody - that I don't even know where or how to begin to refute it. So I'll end the post here and leave this to others, such as Dr. Mark Griffiths, to do; someone who has an altogether more sympathetic and sane understanding of this and other paraphilias. 

See: Mark D. Griffiths, 'Big Love: a beginners guide to macrophilia', Psychology Today (9 April, 2015): click here to read online. The quote from Helen Friedman was taken from here. 

This post was inspired by - and is dedicated to - Miss Shirin Altsohn (aka Shirinatra), the vintage lifestyle model who knows how to nail the Gibson Girl look to a T: click here.