“What does woman want?” Freud once whined. Turns out quite a few women want fantasy sex with T. rex, Sasquatch or a boar-headed god. That, at any rate, is the implication of “monster porn,” which serves up X-rated versions of such demure classics as Leda and the Swan, King Kong or Beauty and the Beast.
Also known as “cryptozoological erotica” or “erotic horror,” monster porn has flourished in the Internet era, which offers abundant platforms for self-publication. According to a report in the journal Business Insider, some authors—most apparently female–are making serious moola peddling tales of humans—most apparently female—coupling with “creatures of every possible variety, from minotaurs to mermen, cthulhus to leprechauns, extraterrestrials to cyclops.”
The consumers of monster porn are also primarily female. Trying to explain the genre’s appeal, freelance writer Bonnie Burton writes: “Regular male characters in romance books tend to be over-the-top perfect glistening warriors and knights, but I want an imperfect monster who needs love to show that he can be just as sweet as his human competition… Why deprive the imagination of a great romance just because the protagonist happens to live for 600 years or has the occasional bout with fleas?”
Monster porn represents a wonderfully wacky reminder that human sexuality is too weird, wild and woolly to be captured by modern science, and especially by theories that reduce our behaviors to genes.
Take, for example, evolutionary psychology, which seeks to find some adaptive purpose—adaptive for our Paleolithic ancestors if not for us–underpinning our thoughts, emotions, actions. Evolutionary psychologists assume that everything we do and feel must in some direct or indirect way promote our genes’ perpetuation (or have promoted it in the past). Evolutionary psychology is hard-pressed to explain homosexual lust, let alone lust for Godzilla.
Another popular bio-paradigm is behavioral genetics, which attempts to link specific traits to specific genes. The behavioral geneticist Dean Hamer claims to have discovered a “gay gene,” but this assertion–like virtually all those emanating from behavioral genetics—has not held up to scrutiny.
Psychologist Jesse Bering, who writes frequently about sexuality, suspects that the key to our sexual tastes lurks not in our genomes but in our childhood experiences. That, of course, is a foundational assumption of psychoanalysis, the steam punk theory of human nature devised by Freud more than a century ago.
In spite of his flaws and confessed befuddlement in the face of female desire (he once called it a “dark continent”), Freud offered far more insight into the twisted contours of sexuality than evolutionary psychologists and other genophilic modern scientists. One of his most profound insights is that our desires and fears are often entangled.
In her recent essay “Forceful Female Fantasy,” literary scholar Laura Frost argues that modern scientific investigators of female sexuality—in spite of all their new-fangled instruments and theories–have not progressed much beyond Freud. Science still cannot explain why some women are “aroused by the idea of sex with strangers, dangerous sex and sex between women, men and animals.”
Researchers should supplement their clinical research with investigations of “the immense body of fantasy literature that already gives voice to women’s desire,” Frost says. Science must “open its eyes to culture rather than just confirm what is obvious.”
In other words, we need the arts and humanities as well as science to understand ourselves. Freud expressed a similar sentiment toward the end of his career. In his 1933 essay “Femininity” he wrote: “If you want to know more about femininity, enquire from your own experiences of life, or turn to the poets, or wait until science can give you deeper and more coherent information.” Or check out monster porn.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which belongs to the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one published on his ScientificAmerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
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