Dr. David Ley is a clinical psychologist and author who often writes and speaks about sexuality issues, especially those that others are unwilling to discuss; he is probably best known to readers of this blog as the foremost critic of the “sex addiction” myth, and he writes a blog on Psychology Today entitled Women Who Stray. But since PT can be rather staid, I asked him if there were any topics he wanted to write on, but couldn’t in that venue; this was his reply.
I first encountered the “creampie fetish” in 2007 as I was interviewing for my book Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them (2009), which discussed the psychology and biology behind couples who deliberately shared the wives sexually with other men. In that lifestyle the creampie, or a man’s ejaculate, trickling slowly from the woman’s vagina, is celebrated as a sort of Holy Grail, demonstrating the wife’s defilement by another man (though the word defilement sounds much, much meaner than these couples usually intend it). In Insatiable Wives, I discussed the creampie it related to the psychology of this lifestyle. But, over recent years, the creampie fetish is no longer relegated to the cuckold fans, but appears to have gone “mainstream,” popping up in porn and sexuality discussions at a much broader level.
Since 2005, Google searches for “creampie” have quadrupled, with the most frequent searches involving “creampie porn” and “anal creampie.” Pornhub recently released interesting user data, also showing that creampie is a highly sought-after form of porn, especially in more politically conservative states. Jokes about creampies are found in movies and late-night comedy talkshows, and Miley Cyrus even performed at a “Christmas Creampies Concert” in 2012. Despite these interesting data and trends of sexual interest, no one has written about the potential psychological and sociological implications of growing interest in this fetishistic desire (like many of my colleagues, I use the term fetish to describe a strong sexual interest or predilection, and do not imply that this desire is inherently pathological or evidence of disturbed sexuality).
Sperm Warfare is a theory describing behavioral and biological adaptations which exert influence over whose sperm is most likely to fertilize a woman’s ovum. Accepting the premise that humans evolved in a promiscuous, nonmonogamous environment where a man’s sperm had to “compete” with the sperm of other men in a woman’s vagina, sperm warfare suggests that natural selection acted upon the physiology and psychology of males, females, sperm, eggs, sex and procreation. The quantity and quality of a man’s sperm at ejaculation is affected by conscious and unconscious beliefs that the woman might have had sex with another man, and the shape of the human penis works like a plunger to remove the semen of another male, if present. (In zebras, there is an immediate, dramatically expulsive fountain of sperm that the female ejects from her vagina during intercourse with a male – if you don’t believe me check out this video, but be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart). When a man believes that he and his sperm may need to compete, the man is more likely to thrust harder, ejaculate more forcefully, and get physically excited again, sooner, in order to put more of his soldiers onto the battlefield. Deeper, more vigorous thrusts are more likely to dislodge any sperm from another man, or even to dislodge an already fertilized egg. Modern research shows that semen contains surprising levels of psychoactive hormones, and ingesting or absorbing semen is associated with decreased depression. Women’s orgasms act, in part, to exert some control of which man’s sperm is most likely to fertilize them, and when being unfaithful, women are more likely to orgasm with the other man, and to wait at least 24 hours (enough time for conception and implantation) before having sex with their primary mate.
Sperm warfare is a powerful theory, but I firmly believe that human behaviors are complex, and multiply determined, especially when it comes to sexual behaviors. It is rare, in my opinion, that any complex behavior has a single explanation. Aside from the biology and psychology of conception warfare, many people eroticize semen itself. Semen holds a powerful symbolic status, from Onan in the Bible, who spilled his seed outside of a woman’s body in what was probably the first creampie in recorded history, to modern porn where cumshots are augmented with cornstarch cream shot by devices to create impossible gushing jets of ejaculate. Many of the cuckold couples I’ve interviewed specifically eroticized the semen of other men, commenting on it as a powerful visual and tactile symbol of a woman’s sexual connection with another man. Men and women have described with me the tactile feeling of penetrating a woman’s vagina after another man had ejaculated within her, and attributed significant emotional impact to this experience. Among the Romans, where women were forbidden to drink wine, husbands would sometimes kiss their wives to detect the taste of wine in her mouth; similarly, it has been suggested that oral sex might actually have developed as a strategy to detect evidence of sexual infidelity. Cuckold fetishists take this anti-cuckoldry mechanism and turn it on its head, fantasizing about performing oral sex on their wife, while her vagina contains the ejaculate of another man, and celebrating the fact. Those who celebrate cuckolding creampies usually describe the sensuality of dominance, submission, taboo, violating social norms, exploring direct and indirect bisexuality, and the clear visual evidence of their wife’s sexual contact with another man.
But, the current popularity of the creampie is not limited to the cuckolding lifestyle. Beyond the generally relevant reason of sperm warfare, why does it seem to have gained popularity in a mainstream audience? Here are a few speculations, but at this point, we have little evidence or research upon which to evaluate these theories:
- It has been suggested that the demand for condom-free sex in pornography represents people’s desires for fantasy, consequence-free sex of abandon, where STD’s and pregnancy are meaningless. The cumshot, and more so, the creampie, demonstrate visually that the actors are embracing and living that fantasy;
- We are inundated by messages and marketing that porn is fake, and doesn’t reflect “real sex.” While I agree with aspects of that message, there is something very, very “real” and complete about the sex that leaves behind a creampie;
- The quantity of a man’s ejaculate is correlated with the size of their testicles, and is commonly believed to reflect something of the man’s masculinity. When a man leaves a large quantity of semen, enough to be readily visible, is this a sign of his virility, such that the viewer can more readily see the man as iconic?
- Internet porn has changed the pornography industry, creating financially viable niches for genres of porn which wouldn’t have been popular or lucrative enough in the past. It seems possible that there have always been those who were or would be, interested in creampies, but that what has changed is the ability of the market to recognize and respond to this desire, rather than the creation of a new desire.
The fertile fluids of the genitals, semen, and female prostatic fluids, have always been eroticized, and treated as powerful symbols of sexuality and virility. The heady brew of the effects of these fluids, involved as they are with feelings of sexual pleasure and arousal, are intrinsically involved in the physiological and psychological experiences of people. The modern popularity of creampie porn is popular because it expresses and triggers many powerful psychological and biological mechanisms of human sexuality.
*Note – I often write for Psychology Today, but this topic is slightly too edgy for them – I once had trouble after writing about the psychology of a man who put his own semen in yogurt samples he distributed to strangers. I’m indebted to Maggie for the invitation to draft it for her own blog.
That’d be Gordon Gallop’s deeply flawed conclusions from a survey he did linking women’s moods to swallowing and unprotected sex. What he failed to consider was that if there is causality there at all it is probably working in the opposite direction – women who feel good about themselves are more likely to be sexually adventurous than women who don’t. He also failed to find a dose related response, with women who sometimes swallow reporting better moods than those who always swallow. And none of his study group suffered from depression anyway.
If the cocktail of hormones in semen are really such great mood lifters in the miniscule quantities that occur in an average ejaculation I somehow think that a drug company would have been onto them before now to replace their largely ineffective and side-effect laden SSRIs, SNRIs, MAOIs, tricyclics, etc.
Mind you, I sure wish someone had published research like that when I was a horny psychology undergraduate in a course that had a disproportionate number of very attractive women.
Oh, and the correlate would be that men who have sex or masturbate more often would be losing more of these mood lifting hormones and so would be more prone to depression.
This is one factor that makes professional sex more exciting for a man than sex with a long-term partner, where monogamy is at least implied.
Well now, while I almost always find this blog interesting and worth reading, it’s been a while since there was an article I wanted to share with other online communities I take part in. Hope this leads you to some new regular readers, Maggie! Psychology Today missed the boat on this one. Ha!
As for the article itself, nearly all of what David writes here rings true to me and my experiences, making a lot of sense, though he may not be aware the other factor discouraging condom use in porn is the real and practical concern of “rubber rash”, but I suspect only those who have sex enough hours in a single day to call it a career discover that particular problem. It’s a bit counter-intuitive to those of us raise on after-school specials and health classes training us to always use condoms whenever we have sex unless married and attempting to procreate. :/
Perhaps I should amend that to “me and my porn-watching experiences”. I would probably have to be married first before I could engage in cuckolding fetishes in person. 😛
I think this is probably the biggest reason for the surge in this kind of porn (which actually rarely involves cuckolding). This helps with the illusion of reality. I would speculate that it’s a lot more common in the growing field of amateur fare, which would reinforce the “reality” of it. I also suspect there is likely a very strong impregnation fetish involved.
Semen in vagina is now interpreted as a fetish? I think this guy has been spending too much time with the perverts, though maybe in this vale of tears withdrawal has become normal practice
Check out Chris Ryan’s book Sex at Dawn. He speaks directly to this phenomenon, but his take is not negative as it doesn’t use the word “cuckold”–rather, it requires the reader to flip one’s view of the world, go back 15,000 years or more when we lived in tribes of 150 or so for 100’s of thousands of years, and carried on intimate relationships with many people at the same time.
Specifically, men and women had sex with many people, a lot. No one minded the mixture of semen–it was the tribe who brought children into being. And other archeologist have pointed that early humans knew the difference between sex for fun and sex for recreation for millions of years. They knew which plants inhibit pregnancy or brought about abortions or enhanced fertility or virility or horniness. We cannot imagine waking up and going for a walk and knowing every plant out there, knowing what each one did, whether it was poisonous or nutritious or got us high or ha to be boiled down from poison to be either.
Ryan points out many benefits of this kind of tribal polyamory: less sexual violence because more men were more satisfied sexually; a deeper understanding of women and their sexual “power”: and a much moire egalitarian kind of live which was supportive. To those who wish to say there’s no evidence for such, the proper response is to say that the refusal or inability to visualize such is exactly why we’re in the shape we’re in.
Check out also “The Invisible Sex,” by Page, Oldavasio and Soffer, which talks about a very different way of looking at tribes way back then. The scene they paint of an entire tribe contributing to the construction of a huge net indoor to catch the week’s food is again an egalitarian picture.
It’s not just Ryan’s book. His wife Cacilda Jethá is the co-author and deserves to be credited.
The ONE time I leave her out…
This is very interesting, especially from a psychologist’s point of view, but unfortunately the author mixes up at least four different impulses and practices, lumping them all under the “creampie” phenomenon, which simply is not accurate. These would include men sharing their women (with which the author leads off), cuckolding, breeding or so-called breeding parties, and creampie.
While some people might engage in several, or all, of these practices, others restrict themselves to just one, and they do not overlap for these people.
The first practice, men sharing their women with other men (and there is a mirror practice of women sharing their men with other women, or men), may or may not involve the implantation of semen. It is usually dominant men who share their submissive mates (or dominant women sharing their submissive mates) with other men, and it is a sign of their dominance over the mate more than any impulse to have the other man impregnate or even creampie their mate. I can speak with some authority on this practice, being a sharer myself, and I would be as concerned as anyone to keep my mate free from unwanted diseases or pregnancies, and so might well require use of a condom in allowing someone else to have sex with my mate.
Cuckolding is a very different practice, and normally involves dominant women wanting to humiliate their submissive male mates by having sex with usually dominant males, often with the submissive mate present and watching. In these cases the women often want the dominant male to deposit his semen in them so their cuckolded mates can suck it out of them. Generally, the goal is not impregnation, but rather humiliation of the submissive male.
Breeding — or what might be generally included under the rubric of “breeding parties” — is the one area where impregnation is the goal. A man might want to impregnate his female mate, or have one or more other males deposit their semen in their mate to impregnate her. In some cases women initiate this practice themselves, wishing to become pregnant, but not necessarily wishing to have a male involved with the child or with them. A breeding party would normally involve a number of males depositing their semen in a female so that it would be unknown who the father is should a pregnancy result. Again, it might be a male or the female who takes the initiative in organizing one of these parties, and the motivations can vary widely.
Finally, there is the practice of creampie itself (I guess “creampieing” might be the active term). This may or may not (despite the assumptions made by the author) overlap with the other practices described here. It can be a purely aesthetic thing, the pleasure of watching male ejaculate oozing from a woman’s sex (it is also admired by both men and women when it oozes from a male or female anus). This is often the case in depictions of creampies in either professional or amateur porn. It may or may not — and often does not — have anything to do with impregnating the woman. Yes, the “fertile fluids of the genitals” — and specifically semen — have long been eroticized, and this no doubt (as the author postulates) can make the creampie a “powerful symbol(s) of sexuality and virility.”
What is important to remember, and seems to be glossed over in this psychologist’s portrayal, is that everyone is an individual, and the motivations behind various practices can be as multifarious as those who engage in them. By the same token, the practices themselves stand as distinctly different, despite any apparent (and sometimes, but far from always, real) overlaps between them.
The idea of oral sex as a way to detect infidelity is interesting. I don’t know how effective it would be (people can wash).
Taste can be erotically powerful. Whenever I write girl-girl sex I have oral sex followed by kissing, one or both girls taking note of the fact that she can taste herself in her lover’s kiss.
Hmm, could be your erotic writing is in a rut. So to speak.
Yeah, probably. I need more girls noting, “I can taste myself in their kisses.”
Actually, I’ve been writing at something with no sexual content at all, which is a good thing since my protagonist is eleven years old. She’s probably held hands with a classmate and thinks that’s soooo romantic. Or not; it’s hard to find time for that mushy stuff when you’re jumping motorcycles over semi trucks.