Learn about teratophilia, the kink for monsters both real and imagined.
Talking about teratophilia, or monster fetish, is tricky territory. There are two ways to define teratophilia that are two distinct kinks. It gets complicated when the two converge into one, as they do for many.
What is Teratophilia?
Teratophilia is a sexual attraction to monsters. You know, aliens, King Kong, Nessie from the Loch—fictional, paranormal, and other non-human figments of our anthropomorphic imagination.
There are general categories and specific subcategories of the monster fetish.
Someone might have a thing for monstrous creatures in general, finding themselves aroused whenever they’re watching a 70s horror movie or reading Japanese comics about octopi.
It could get specific—some folks want to be ravished by an octopus tentacle or Bigfoot and no one else.
Other teratophiles may fixate on the idea of being eaten whole by a monster!
Read: What Is Vore? The Consuming Fetish of Vorarephilia
A Tale of Two Kinks
Teratophilia also refers to an attraction to deformed or monstrous humans.
This gets ugly, quite literally, because it is dehumanizing to call someone a monster or see them as ugly. It’s not politically correct and therefor difficult to talk about. But some folks experience sexual desire for ugly people with extreme deformities or disabilities, like burn victims, amputees, or people born with disfigurement.
For these folks, it isn’t just incidental. We might love someone who survives a fire because she is a great person. For the teratophiliac, the deformity or injury is key to their attraction.
Read: Devoteeism: The Fetishizing of Disability
These two separate forms of teratophilia, (monster fetish and ugly people fetish), that share a name actually converge for many people. They feel attraction to fictional monsters, and to human people with major challenges.
Monster Fetish and Teratophilia in the Media
To the mainstream that does not share their fetish, the monster kink can seem strange. But it actually has a long history and has a more widely popular appeal than it appears on the surface.
The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is the perfect example. The TV series was huge, and the beast character was a massive sex symbol!
Bigfoot erotica is also widespread. It’s actually an industry.
Pulp novels, cinema, and comics featuring hybrid man-animals and beautiful damsels were hot in the 70s and have never lost their thrill. Cryptozoological erotica is a genre of its own. Some of it is self-published for a small audience, but some is wildly appealing to huge audiences.
Think of the Guillermo del Toro film The Shape of Water. It was a romance between a woman and a monster. So many women fell in love with this fictional, but humanoid amphibious man that a dildo company made and sold supposed replicas of his genitalia!
Most explicit and specific fetishes are mostly male with a smaller percentage of female enthusiasts. But teratophilia in both of its manifestations is largely female. Sure, guys love to read about mountain beasts chasing beautiful women. But the half-man half-beast thing has a lot of ladies in dreamtime.
Think about the film Splice, where Adrien Brody mates with the hybrid angel-human-monster Dren. How many men are fantasizing about her today? Not too many. Beauty’s Beast and The Shape of Water are recurring themes for a lot of women.
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Why Do People Have Teratophilia?
Some psychologists point to simple escapism to explain teratophilia. Some say women are empathic and nurturing, and misunderstood monsters bring out those qualities, as do humans who have suffered disfiguring traumas or diseases. Some speculate that women who have been hurt by real men feel freer to experience sexual pleasure on their own fantasy terms.
Many teratophiles who are accused of dehumanizing people or objectifying them with lust for the “ugly” or “deformed” see themselves differently and see their desire from a much different perspective. They feel simply that they see beauty and sexuality beyond the constraints of society. They argue that they see more humanity, more inclusively.
Read: Beyond Human: Fetish Outside the Human Paradigm
Are you a teratophile? Please share your monster fantasies in the comments.
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