What do shemale porn and slash fiction have in common?
Exploring male and female erotical illusions.
Also posted on Psychology Today
WARNING: This article contains language and images that some may consider offensive or obscene.
Computational neuroscientists have figured out how many optical illusions trick our brains. In fact, the logo for our former department is based upon a deceptively simple visual stimulus known as the Ehrenstein illusion.
The unitary pattern of multiple visual cues (the lines) evokes the illusory perception of a bright white circle. In this optical illusion, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
It turns out that our brains are also tricked by erotical illusions. By combining (or distorting) multiple sexual cues into novel patterns, it’s possible to evoke bewilderingly intense sexual arousal.
Erotical illusions account for one of the most popular and baffling sexual interests of heterosexual men: shemale porn. (Many transsexuals find the term “shemale” offensive when applied to an individual, though this is the common term for the genre within the adult industry.) Figures in shemale porn feature the body of a woman and a penis, often a large one.
In Japanese anime, transsexual characters are known as futanari. Futanari porn reveals exactly what appeals to straight men about shemales. Futanari characters are drawn with hyperfeminine bodies, typically very young, with large round breasts and hourglass figures, large eyes with long eyelashes and beautiful faces. They also possess giant horse-sized penises. Typical futanari features schoolgirls with giant protrusions beneath their plaid skirts, teenage girls with pink hair and a bulge in their jeans, slender ballerinas in tutus and sporting erections as long as their slender legs.
Recently, contemporary adult webmasters have found ways to manufacture “artificial shemales” that do not involve the use of actual transsexual actresses. One site, Futanaria.com, uses real women. The women are voluptuous and curvy, with enormous strap-on dildos that look like authentic if colossally oversized penises. The site is full of scenes of attractive, busty women stroking their giant artificial manhood until geysers of fake semen spray across the room.
The site makes the erotical illusion very clear: anatomical cues of femininity juxtaposed with the visual cue of a penis. (The penis is a prominent sexual cue for many heterosexual men. You can also read sex therapist Stephen Snyder’s reaction to our data on transsexual erotica.)
What about the opposite? What about someone with strong muscular arms, tattooed biceps, a bald head, a beard—and a vagina? The most famous (and perhaps only) transsexual male porn star is the cigar-puffing Buck Angel.
Buck Angel combines a number of visual cues of masculinity with the single feminine cue of a vagina. Straight men express no interest in Buck Angel, and some find him disquieting. But many gay men find him extremely intriguing.
While most male erotical illusions are visual, female erotical illusions are psychological. This reflects the divergent sexual cues that arouse men and women: the male brain primarily responds to visual cues, the female brain primarily responds to psychological cues. The heterosexual female brain is not activated by Buck Angel. Instead, erotical illusions comprised of psychological cues are more effective at tricking the female sexual brain—such as slash fiction.
Slash takes its name not from any kind of violence, but from a punctuation mark. The content of slash stories consists of a particular pairing of two men from popular culture, such as Edward/Jacob (from Twilight), Harry/Draco (from Harry Potter), or McKay/Sheppard (from Stargate: Atlantis). Over the course of a slash story, the two “slashed” heroes end up emotionally and sexually involved, such as this abbreviated snippet from a Superboy/Lex Luthor story:
“He did want to tell Lex everything, but years of warnings from his parents echoed in his head and he felt his stomach twist at what he had committed himself to. “Come on, I’ll drive us back to the mansion.” Lex smiled.
Talk. Clark nodded. He’d known there was going to be talking. That had been part of this whole decision he had jumped into, right? He could talk. Had been able to for years. He could handle it. Really.
Lex leaned in and gave Clark a slow and thoughtful kiss. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Clark nodded and tried to smile, but gave up in favor of pulling Lex close and burying his face in the crook of Lex’s neck. The touch of warm skin, the smell of sex and Lex, and the hands rubbing gentle circles on his back made it easier to be certain this was the right thing to do.”
Though sex is often a key element of slash, the main focus is always how two strong males share their tender side with one another. Though none of us can subjectively compare what it’s like to experience both a male erotical illusion and a female erotical illusion, it seems reasonable to assume that slash offers women an even more intense illusion than lesbian porn offers men. As Wired columnist Regina Lynn notes, gay romance is “more than the sum of its parts” because it’s the emotional interactions that activate female arousal, and having two alpha males work out their inner goo together builds more complex and engaging stimulation than watching two busty blonds gyrate against each other.
Some other male erotical illusions include facials, bukkake, compilations, transformation fiction, wetlook, and humantauria. The most popular female erotical illusion is probably paranormal romance, with vampire Edward Cullen being its quintessential female-brain-duping hero.
Erotical illusions make vivid one of the most fascinating aspects of human sexuality: that much of sexual arousal results from the integrative sorcery of our imagination.
Illustration by boymeetshero.com. Copyright 2011 Billion Wicked Thoughts.
