A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire (32 page)

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Authors: Ogi Ogas,Sai Gaddam

BOOK: A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire
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BDSM play is usually not aimed at generating an orgasm, though its practitioners usually consider it erotic. “A sub might orgasm, if the dom allows it, but it’s not typical,” explains Tiiu. “It’s more about getting something you need, and that need isn’t always an orgasm.” The domination and submission cues provided by BDSM seem to have a direct line to our reward centers. Wasteland has one of the highest retention rates (the rate at which people maintain their sign-ups) in the industry, with an average subscription rate (before the 2008 recession) of seven months. Colin also notes that “a goodly number of the members who cancel return to join again after an average 3 month ‘rest period,’ presumably where they spent scarce money on other things in life.”
The very structured and ritualistic culture of BDSM poses a very interesting question. Do its practitioners satisfy the same cues of sexual domination and sexual submission experienced by viewers of Exploited Teens videos or by readers of coercion scenes in fan fiction?
One possible way to answer this question is by looking at erotic stories. In the following table, the left column lists the ten most common phrases in BDSM stories on Literotica; the right side lists the ten most common phrases in coercion stories.
 
There’s a clear difference in the content between the two types of stories. At the top of the BDSM list is
her master
and
my master
. At the top of the coercion stories is
the guy
. BDSM uses
the crop
, while coercion stories use
the knife
. BDSM emphasizes the relationship, the coercion stories emphasize the threat. Another intriguing difference is the fact that there aren’t any overt sexual words on the BDSM list. On the coercion list, there’s
the fuck
and
his dick
.
Reading BDSM stories and coercion stories, one is struck by the feeling that BDSM tends to emphasize the formal relationships of control and dominance without delving too deeply into explicitly sexual territory. In contrast, coercion stories tend to emphasize sexual humiliation and helplessness, and always have graphic sexual descriptions. This emphasis on the raw experience of power is also suggested by the fact that many people in positions of authority and power are drawn to BDSM, often as subs. BDSM might simply be a very sophisticated means of accessing the reward mechanisms associated with the psychological mechanisms of social dominance that guide all primates.
THE NATURE OF DESIRE
 
We’ve completed our survey of sexual cues, ending with a set of cues that are perhaps responsible for more erotic creativity on the Internet than any other. There is greater diversity and inventiveness in sexual submission and sexual domination Web sites than within Web sites associated with any other sexual subgenre. This fertile sexual imagination extends to both male visual sites and female story sites.
But the two sexes differ on most other cues. Men are visual. They respond to a gender cue that is fundamental and fixed. They respond to visual cues that are flexible during adolescence, then very fixed. They respond to a cuckold cue from sperm competition, an authenticity cue, a novelty cue, and a partner pleasure cue. Transgression can intensify arousal.
The brains of both gay and straight men are like Elmer Fudd: any cue triggers an immediate, powerful reaction directed toward seduction and orgasm. Men hunt for the perfect single cue, the ever elusive Bugs Bunny, though any wabbit will do.
Several key factors have shaped male desire. First, the need to evaluate potential female partners. The best woman was one who could provide and raise the most and healthiest children. Second, the need to be instantly ready for sex should the opportunity arise. Third, the need to physiologically compete with other men who might have had sex with the same woman. Fourth, the need to compete with other men socially for access to women.
In a very real sense, there is something tragic about male sexuality. It is never satisfied. Tomorrow is another day for the hunt—whether a single guy cruising for a one-night stand, or a married guy searching a tube site for something new. The novelty cue ensures that whatever is delicious today is bland tomorrow—and male desire is frequently a solitary affair.
But male desire is also powerful, intense, urgent. It can take a man to strange, new places and open up new doorways of experience. It’s never tied down, never sedated, and can incite a man to wander great distances in search of fortune and adventure. It drives dazzling visual creativity, such as Japanese anime.
Women are more focused on emotional and psychological cues, which generate erotic stories suited for satisfying female appetites. Women respond to a truly astonishing range of cues across many domains. The physical appearance of a man, his social status, personality, commitment, the authenticity of his emotions, his confidence, family, attitude toward children, kindness, height, and smell are all important to Miss Marple’s Detective Agency. Unlike men, who become aroused after being exposed to a single cue, women need to experience enough simultaneous cues to cross an evervarying threshold. Sometimes, just a few overwhelming cues can take a woman there. Other times, it takes a very large number of moderate cues. For a man, a single cue is often sufficient, and sometimes necessary. For women, no single cue is either necessary or sufficient.
Women have unique psychological cues. Irresistibility and adorability are feelings a woman has about herself that influence her self-esteem. Women are also sensitive to environmental cues, like food, shelter, and security. Unlike the solitary Elmer Fudd, Miss Marple is garrulous, frequently chatting with other detectives. Writing and reading erotica is far more of a social enterprise for women than for men. Women’s desires also change across the monthly cycle and sometimes droop, whereas men’s desires are constant all year long.
These portraits appear so different as to describe two different species separated by an abyss. And yet, our race has always found harmony within this chasm. Our very lives are a testament to the millions of times our ancestors have bridged this gap and found the cues we craved staring back at us from the other side.
CHAPTER 11
 
Erotical Illusions
 
The Creative Power of Cues
 
 
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
—Oscar Wilde
 
 
 
 
F
or more than five centuries, the enigmatic smile of Lisa del Giocondo has enchanted millions of visitors to the Louvre. Completed by Leonardo da Vinci in 1507, the painting more commonly known as the
Mona Lisa
portrays an Italian woman with a famously mysterious expression. The
Mona Lisa
smile appears to simultaneously convey mischievousness and a staid worldliness. Why does it have such a bewitching, dynamic effect? Because Leonardo da Vinci painted an optical illusion.
If you peer very closely at Mona Lisa’s mouth, it appears to be rather neutral, almost a horizontal line. However, if you look into her eyes, her expression changes. Now she seems to be smiling merrily, almost like she’s teasing you. How does this work? Margaret Livingstone, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard who studies human vision, discovered da Vinci’s visual trick.
Our brain perceives high-resolution details in the center of our vision and coarse, low-resolution shapes in the periphery. When you look directly at the high-resolution details of Mona Lisa’s mouth, you see her relatively flat lips. But if you step back and look at her eyes, nose, or forehead—any where but her mouth—your peripheral vision picks up only the coarse details of her mouth: now her lips seem to follow the strong curving lines of her cheekbones and semi-dimpled cheeks into a smile, almost like the Joker’s makeup-extended grin in
Batman
.
This juxtaposition of two different visual cues—a high-frequency cue and a low-frequency cue—is the basis of the most famous optical illusion in art.
Neurally, the
Mona Lisa
shares something in common with Chicken McNuggets and the luscious desserts at the Cheesecake Factory. The mouthwatering tastes of these foods are also perceptual illusions that have been specifically crafted to exploit our brain’s gustatory cues. Professional “food engineers” at restaurant corporations like McDonald’s, the Cheesecake Factory, and T.G.I. Friday’s combine sweet, salty, and savory tastes to produce entrees that maximize
cravability.
This is the food industry’s term for dishes that dupe the mind’s gustatory system in order to make diners want more and more and more. “Cravable foods stick in customers’ imagination and bring them back,” explains Bennigan’s chef David Sonzogni.
The manufactured cravability of Cold Stone Creamery’s Hunka Chunka Burnin’ Fudge or Chili’s Texas Cheese Fries brings together combinations of tastes that never existed before in nature. When they hit our tongue, our brain swoons with a pleasure more intense and thrilling than when we bite into a mere bar of chocolate or fried potato. The unique juxtaposition of tastes, textures, and temperatures in manufactured cravable foods trick the brain in the same way the
Mona Lisa
smile manipulates the perception of two different visual cues. But if visual and gustatory cues can be combined to produce surprising new perceptual effects, what about sexual cues? Is it possible to create the erotic equivalent of the Mona Lisa smile?
The answer is a resounding yes.
Certain kinds of sexual stimuli merge together multiple sexual cues in a kind of perceptual trickery we call
erotical illusions
. With modern technology and some very human creativity, ancient sexual cues are now spliced together in novel combinations that can dupe or hyperstimulate our sexual perception, giving rise to curious new erotic cravings in both men and women. But there is one crucial difference between optical and erotical illusions. In his book
Stumbling on Happiness
, psychologist Daniel Gilbert asserts that “optical illusions are the same for everyone.” Men and women both perceive the same shifty Mona Lisa smile. But things are quite different with erotical illusions. Since they rely on sexual cues, male erotical illusions have no effect whatsoever on the female brain and female erotical illusions have no effect on the male brain.
In this chapter, we’re going to review some of these erotical illusions and demonstrate how our brain’s desire software is one of the most potent and overlooked sources of creative inspiration in the human mind.
FUTANARIA
 
Sage Agastya, a renowned Vedic scholar and the author of many couplets in the Rig Veda, occupies a special orbit in the constellation of Indian mythology. According to legend, Agastya came across many ancestors hanging upside down in a cave. When asked why they hadn’t proceeded to their well-earned place in the heavens, the inverted ancestors bemoaned the lack of an heir to continue their line and perform the proper rites to send them on their way. So Agastya decided to create a wife for himself. Using Vedic wizardry, he selected the most desirable parts of various domesticated animals to fashion a beautiful and perfect wife named
Lopamudra
, which means “assembled from the most beautiful parts.”
Based on traditional depictions of Lopamudra, we can presume that Agastya selected those body parts that best satisfied his male visual cues: firm breasts, round butt, wide hips, small feet. Similarly, when men search for porn on the Internet, they also seek out the perfect combination of cues. They hope to find a body that maximizes their desire by activating as many cues as possible. Many Web sites make it easy. Thumbnail Web sites like Dan’s Movies, Cliphunter, and Bravo Vids display rows of photographs laid out like a catalog. The images feature attractive female bodies in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. But once in a while, a different kind of body pops out.
“I call it the ‘Trannie Peek,’ ” explains one industry veteran. “Adult webmasters figured out that straight guys will click on shemales out of curiosity and take a look. It grabs about 5% of the clicks on straight TGPs [thumbnail galleries].”
The terms “trannie” and “shemale” are frequently used as slang within the adult industry and in adult content for a transsexual woman who has been treated with hormones so that she possesses breasts and a female figure but still possesses a penis. (Some in the transsexual community consider both “trannie” and “shemale” to be derogatory terms.) They are also known as “T-girls” and “ladyboys.” PornHub and many other tube sites also features the occasional T-girl porn on their front page, but they only present gay porn if you actively search for it. This is because the main audience for T-girl porn is heterosexual men.

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