c7_assassin
3rd Level Black Feather
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In light of some recent controversy over a member using this forum as fodder for a school project, I thought I'd come clean about a paper I wrote a few weeks back.
The class was a third-year undergrad course called 'Kinky Feminisms' and was all about the critical study of sexuality and power from a feminist perspective. We did nothing but watch foreign language pornography for three hours a week, it was actually a pretty fun class. 😛
Anyway, we all had to write an 8-page research paper in lieu of a final exam, and I couldn't think of any better topic than this forum. 😀 So I took what I knew, mined some quotes, and put it all together. I tried to make it seem like I had never heard of the TMF before I started doing my 'research,' since I didn't really feel like outing myself as a ticklephile to my professor, so the whole thing comes off a little 'outsider'-ish. But I got an A+.
I thought that in all fairness, now that it's done, I should post the essay here so that it's available for anyone who wants to read it. Fair's fair. It's pretty dry, and I had to make my thesis fit with the themes of the course... but I'd still like to know what you all think, if you think I got it right or if I'm way out to lunch. And if anyone thinks I was wrong to write it or that I misrepresented somebody when I wrote it, you have my sincerest apology.
Without further ado:
*****
The Erotics of Power and Kinky Sexualities: A Ticklish Subject?
Sex does not stand removed from considerations of power: all feminism, from the anti-pornography acolytes of Andrea Dworkin to the pro-pornogrpahy third-wave feminists agree on this basic point. The practitioners of 'kinky' feminisms and sexualities approach questions of sex and power in an explicit and self-aware manner. The consensual transference and exploitation of power is one of the defining features of 'kinky' sexualities. However, many sexual practices which fall under this general umbrella do not conform to much of our received wisdom on what constitutes a kinky sexual identity. Having escaped the scrutiny of academia, these practices call into question how far apart from 'normal' sexualities kink really stands. One of these is the so-called 'tickling fetish.' Through a close examination of this phenomenon and the representations of sexuality it produces, we can see how sexuality and power converge in previously unexplored ways, we can begin to trouble the orthodoxy of what is essential to 'kink,' and we can begin to chart the unexplored terrain that lies between kinky and non-kinky sexualities (or perhaps underlies both).
Tickling fetishism (known as either ‘knismolagnia’ or ‘acarophilia’) is a relatively unexamined area of human sexuality. While there are a great many sexual proclivities of which the same can be said, most of these are practices that the majority of people have never heard of, or can scarcely imagine (vorarephilia, for example, is a sexual fixation on cannibalism, as either the eater or the dish; macrophilia is an attraction to giants). Tickling, on the other hand, is an activity most of us have at least a passing familiarity with. Nearly everyone has been tickled or has tickled another person at some point in their life. Many scientists have researched ticklishness itself (see, for example, Szameitat (2009) on the characteristics of ticklish laughter, and Harris (1999) on whether it is possible to be tickled by a machine...), even Darwin and Freud. Freud, ever attuned to sexual matters, wrote that when discussing pleasurable 'stroking' sensations in children, "the analogy of tickling is forced upon our notice," (Freud, 183). So the lack of critical theory on tickling fetishism is surprising. As Kipnis said, “Tickling is one of those permeable borders: between play and sex, between sadism and fun, certainly between adult and childhood sexuality,” (Kipnis, 123). What, then, can tickling fetishism tell us about sexuality and kink? What do tickling fetishists fantasize about? In what way do knismolagniacs understand tickling to be linked to sex? Linked to power? Linked to other BDSM practices?
Thanks to the internet, we now have a perfect resource for answering many of these questions. The Tickling Media Forum is an internet community which has existed since 2000, run by and for the tickling community, and which serves as repository for thousands of megabytes of erotic media created by tickling fetishists. Users are able to browse through galleries of still images, video clips, artwork, and erotic fiction that relates to the subject of tickling (usually in an explicitly sexual way, but not always), and can post content of their own. Commercial producers of ‘tickling videos’ use this site to advertise their products, and it also serves as a social network for self-described fetishists or ‘enthusiasts,’ (membership apparently totals more than 80 000 worldwide). By exploring this vast, untapped resource, we can learn a great deal about how tickling fetishists (known to each other as 'ticklephiles') experience and interpret their sexuality.
It is important as we discuss this fetish and its representations not to fall into the trap of examining tickling-fetishism from a 'medicalizing' or 'Othering' perspective: “Medical definitions…are forged from an objective perspective; they tend to pathologise and dissect those practices rather than providing an understanding of how they are experienced and interpreted in the context of contemporary BDSM culture,” (Krywinska, 187). Therefore it behoves us to pay close attention to the narratives of ticklephiles themselves, in their own words, which are also widely available on the Tickling Media Forum. For example, in one discussion thread entitled "How did you figure it out?" members discuss how they came to realize they had a fetish. One user reports, "I knew I always liked tickling and being tickled, long before it was anything sexual. Back in second grade there was this odd picture book about a family going hiking, and one picture had a Dad tickling his daughter's feet with the caption 'Dad rubs his daughter's feet after a long hike' or something like that. I kept going back to the page over and over, not really knowing why I liked it so much... Eventually my family got a computer and the internet. One day out of curiosity I searched for 'tickling' and one of the first sites to pop up was 'Tom's Adult Tickling Website'... One of the first things I saw was a picture of a topless woman with her hands tied above her head, her feet in stocks, and a hand reaching into the shot to tickle her bare feet. At that moment I knew." Another user remembers, "I was absolutely obsessed with it for many years. I mean, I would just write the word in order to read it over and over and over and over and over...... I would look up the word in the dictionary and memorize the dictionary term. I thought about it all the time. I would spell it out in my alphabet cereal. Even in my alphabet soup. I would write it on my body in the shower with the soap..."
These narratives, typical of the average respondant, are important, because they highlight what makes the experiences of ticklephiles different from those of most people. Tickling was usually a fixation from earliest childhood, before the development of a 'mature' sexuality. This is hardly surprising: along with spanking, tickling is a ubiquitous childhood experience. Both experiences are inflected by unequal power relationships (social relationships, in these cases, being augmented by physical power); tickling even shares with spanking an aspect of punishment in some cases (Breeding, 2009). It is hardly surprising, then, that tickling should eventually become a sexual practice along the same lines as spanking.
To what degree does this proclivity manifest itself in the life of ticklephiles? The answers here seem less straightforward. Valerie Steele conceptualized fetishism as existing on a continuum, ranging from Level 1 and Level 2 ("a slight preference/strong preference exists for certain kinds of sex partners, sexual stimuli, or sexual activity") to Levels 3 and 4, where specific stimuli are "necessary for sexual arousal" or "take the place of a sex partner," (Steele, 11). Although her scale is problematic (does anyone not have strong preferences or aversions for certain sex partners and practices? Wouldn't the person who had no such preferences be the truly remarkable one?), it does recognize that sexual desires do not manifest themselves with the same intensity in all people, even those with a supposed 'fetish.' In a thread entitled "Is your desire to tickle greater than your desire for sex?" responses range from "In my case absolutely. I'd much rather tickle a woman for a half-hour than have sex with her for two hours," to "I would say they are on par, because I would like to include tickling into forplay so for me tickling would be part of my sexual activity, though tickling doesn't have to lead to sex, but it does arouse me sexualy [sic]," to "No I have to have both...but if I can only get one I would take sex every time." Most ticklephiles seem to conceive of their fetish as existing within the realm of 'regular' sexuality: they are attracted to the opposite sex (or same sex, as the case may be) and desire intercourse, and also find the act of tickling this desired sex partner erotic (Level 2 or 3). Some seem to be operating at Level 4: one response was "What is this sex you all speak of?" Yet tickling, even for the extreme ticklephile, still requires another person. Which raises the question: what, exactly, does sexuality structured by tickling fetishism look like in practice? Does it follow BDSM models of sexuality, or heteronormative models? Is tickle-fetishism unique in its representations of sex?
The video clips available on this website can help us answer some of these questions. The number of clips and videos available is enormous, and prevents a thorough analysis at this time. I have chosen to focus on two video producers, based on their fecundity (the number of videos allows us to look for coherent themes in the work), and their longevity (a long history suggests that what these producers are saying resonates with the tickling community in some way). Both offer diverse, sometimes contradictory models of sex and sexuality, and although there is a great deal of performativity involved, it often does not take the forms we usually associate with kink and BDSM.
Take, for example, the videos produced by a company called "The Laughing Gas Zone." These videos appear professionally produced, with sets and costumes, and usually feature a storyline involving some kind of kidnapping, interrogation, or revenge narrative. One recent Star Wars-themed addition has the following plot summary: "The Resistance fights the evil Imperials, who hold the galaxy in the grip of fear. The Princess has been captured, and the infamous Dark Lord has been sent to interrogate her. Defiant, the Princess refuses to reveal the location of the Resistance's base. Dark Lord threatens her, but the Princess is not so easily frightened. The Dark Lord realizes that she will have to be 'persuaded.' Sending her to his special interrogation chamber, he subjects the Princess to an unsuspecting torture that even her resolve is no match for. Soon, the haughty and defiant princess is a giggling school girl, begging for mercy, as she desperately tries to hold back the location of the Resistance's base. Will Dark Lord crack her?"
What is the appeal of this particular fantasy? While it is more lighthearted and playful than most BDSM portrayals (for example, those embodied in the film Seduction: The Cruel Woman), power and domination obviously play a crucial role. The image of a beautiful princess reduced to 'a giggling schoolgirl' is central, and speaks to the importance of role-reversal in many of these representations. The victim of this 'torture' is a dominant figure whose weakness is being exploited. This theme re-emerges in many of Laughing Gas Zone's videos: other figures subjected to tickle-torture are fearless amazons, stern prison guards, teachers, psychiatrists, and boxers, to name but a few. This is an important aspect to remember, since it is also true that nearly all the 'lees' (an abreviation of 'ticklee' that is commonly used on this website) are women: to the literal-minded critic, these videos might seem to promote the subjugation of women. Instead, the fact that is it powerful women being made 'helpless' in these fantasies suggests that they are on some level a psychological and sexual response to female empowerment as it exists in society: the sexual appeal comes from recognition and respect for actual female authority (just as some women are attracted to powerful men).
It is also important to note that the fantasy involved is tickling, rather than violence. Tickling, although represented as 'torturous,' is physically much more benign than any real form of torture. This is significant. "The word [tickle] speaks of the precarious, and so of the erotic. To tickle is, above all, to seduce, often by amusement," (Phillips, 10). What we are witnessing in these videos is the seduction-by-amusement of unobtainable figures of femininity. The fact that they frequently culminate in actual sex highlights the 'seduction' theme (coitus is apparently not common in most BDSM films, [Gallaway, 172]). Also, many of the 'lers' ('ticklers') in these videos are women, not men, troubling any notion of female 'subjugation' being enacted. If women are portrayed as 'the exploited,' they are also 'the exploiters' in many of these sexual fantasies.
The theme of women as ticklers and exploiters is exemplified by the videos produced by Realtickling, another commercial tickle-video producer. These videos also tend to follow narratives of revenge and interrogation, usually in a familiar BDSM environment, such as a dungeon. The aesthetics of these videos are also recognizable from BDSM: dim lighting, leather corsets, masks, and 'dungeon' accoutrements such as chains and wooden stocks. One video in a series called "Kristin's Dungeon," has the following description: "It seems that Rachelle is being held in a dungeon and tickled every day by Kristin. Rachelle has deliriously ticklish underarms. She begs and pleads with her tickler not to do it. But she does!" Over the course of these videos, Kristin dominates several young women, before being ambushed by a former 'victim' and tickle-tortured herself. Such reversals are a common theme in these videos, which include narratives of military interrogators using tickling on their prisoners, only to be captured by the opposing side and subjected to the same 'torture' by their victims, and so forth.
There are several noteworthy aspects of these representations. For one thing, we see the same theme of those with power being stripped of it and 'punished.' Also, while the 'lers' in these films are almost always women, the 'lees' are often men. The videos involving male 'lees' are particularly interesting since they, too, often bridge the gap between tickling and sex, but not in a traditional way. In "Lilliana Bondage Handjob", for example: "This beautiful creature has him, stretched out in her dungeon, cuts off his underwear with scissors, and proceeds to give him a long handjob. She tells him 'I'm gonna milk you dry.' And she means it! She doesn't stop stroking even long after he cums, and it drives him insane." Beyond the Freudian motif of 'stroking,' how do such representations relate to the tickling fetish? Phillips writes, "Through tickling, a child will be initiated into the helplessness and disarray of a certain primitive kind of pleasure, dependant upon the adult to hold and not to exploit the experience. And this means to stop at the blurred point, so acutely felt in tickling, at which pleasure becomes pain....It has to stop, or the real humiliation begins. The child, as the mother says, will get hysterical," (Phillips, 10). Pleasure and pain, helplessness, humiliation, hysteria: such are the themes of all these videos, whether their focus is on tickling or orgasms. It appears that such fantasies underlie the sexuality of many ticklephiles.
This notion is supported by the third sexual practice that Realtickling videos portray, in conjunction with tickling and forced orgasms: hypnosis. For example: "Amber Rain's hypnosis continues as the word 'horny' makes her just that...it leads to her touching herself and orgasming. Then she feels the tickling everywhere [as] he tickles the doll in front of her and she laughs like a helpless little girl." This time there is no dungeon setting, but again, what this has in common with tickling is the fantasy of helplessness and exploitation, as well as the use of pleasure, not pain, as the instrument of domination. Kipnis observed, "There's no particular mystery about the origin of the erotics of humiliation," (Kipnis, 123), but her reference was to spanking and hardcore BDSM. Tickling videos, although not hardcore, could be described as 'hardcore-lite' (not to be confused with 'softcore'): they express the same fantasies of hardcore BDSM, but in a benign, almost childish way, and in a way that is relatable to familiar heterosexual eroticism. These fantasies seem to represent a 'missing link' in the sexual chain that connects heteronormative and kinky sexualities.
This research represents only the most cursory examination of the phenomenon of tickling fetishism. Space constraints prevent me from taking even a passing glance at the artwork or fiction on this single website, or from mining the treasure-trove of online discussions of tickling, kink lifestyles, and sexuality that are archived therein. Such research is overdue, and will doubtless help us understand a great deal more than we do about how sexuality is produced in individuals, and how sexual identities are perceived and performed. However, we can draw tentative conclusions from what we have been able to observe thus far.
First, it seems clear that tickling fetisism has its roots in childhood experiences of power and pleasure. The role-reversals and fantasies of tickling as 'torture' speak to the childhood experience of being tickled and wishing for revenge. This not only supports theories of sexuality that link erotic desires to early experiences, but also suggests that many (if not most) children are sexual beings capable of understanding and responding to not only physical pleasure, but also the dynamics of power that enable this pleasure. Most sexual identities (kinky and non-kinky) are probably formed in very similar ways.
Second, this research suggests that we should reconsider our theories on what constitutes a 'kinky' sexual identity in the first place: while tickling fetishism is doubtless a form of kink, not every ticklephile experiences or enacts his or her desires in the same way. The same is likely true of other fetishists and BDSM enthusiasts. Therefore hard and fast rules about what kink 'is' (that it must rely on props and theatricality, that it can exist only in the realm of 'queered' sexualities) must be seriously questioned. We may have only been paying attention to those who have sought it out.
Third and most importantly, the phenomenon of tickling fetishism absolutely confirms the basic principle of feminist research into sexualities: sexuality is infused with understandings of power. Tickling fetishism and the spectrum of desires it relates to present a sexuality that bound up in power relationships. In tickling, this is the power to give pleasure as well as pain: both dictatorial and benign, fetishistic and yet other-directed. This means that it can make no sense to think of power and domination as only something that is only significant for 'fringe' or BDSM sexualities: it is a factor in sexualities that present themselves only as benign, pleasurable, and other-directed as well. Once we realize this, we can begin to trouble the imaginary boundary that separates 'normal' and transgressive sexualities, and we can come to a fuller understanding of the 'kinkiness' that animates us all.
Breeding, Mariah. (2009) "Violence and domination in sibling relationships: an ethnogrpahy of the unacknowledged 'business as usual' of childhood,"Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 70(4-A), pp 1446
Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, from the Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. VII, Hogarth Press, London, 1953-1974
Gallaway, Jayson. Diary of a Viagra Fiend, Atria Books, New York, 2004
Harris, Christine R.; Christenfeld, Nicholas (1999). 'Can a machine tickle?' Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Vol. 6(3), pp. 504-510.
Kipnis, Laura. 'How to look at pornography,' Bound and Gagged: Pornogrpahy and the Politics of Fantasy in America, Duke University Press, Durham, 1999, pp. 161-178
Krywinska, Tanya. 'Bondage, domination, and sado-masochism,' Sex and the Cinema, Wallflower Press, London, 2006, pp. 186-200
Phillips, Adam. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993
Steele, Valerie. Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.
Szameitat, Diana P.; Alter, Kal; Szameitat, Andre J.; Darwin, Chris;
Wildgruber, Dirk; Dietrich, Susanne; Sterr, Annette (2009). 'Differentiation in emotions in laughter at the behavioural level,' Emotion, Vol. 9(3), 397-405.
The Tickling Media Forum, www.ticklingforum.com, retrieved 21 March 2010
The class was a third-year undergrad course called 'Kinky Feminisms' and was all about the critical study of sexuality and power from a feminist perspective. We did nothing but watch foreign language pornography for three hours a week, it was actually a pretty fun class. 😛
Anyway, we all had to write an 8-page research paper in lieu of a final exam, and I couldn't think of any better topic than this forum. 😀 So I took what I knew, mined some quotes, and put it all together. I tried to make it seem like I had never heard of the TMF before I started doing my 'research,' since I didn't really feel like outing myself as a ticklephile to my professor, so the whole thing comes off a little 'outsider'-ish. But I got an A+.
I thought that in all fairness, now that it's done, I should post the essay here so that it's available for anyone who wants to read it. Fair's fair. It's pretty dry, and I had to make my thesis fit with the themes of the course... but I'd still like to know what you all think, if you think I got it right or if I'm way out to lunch. And if anyone thinks I was wrong to write it or that I misrepresented somebody when I wrote it, you have my sincerest apology.
Without further ado:
*****
The Erotics of Power and Kinky Sexualities: A Ticklish Subject?
Sex does not stand removed from considerations of power: all feminism, from the anti-pornography acolytes of Andrea Dworkin to the pro-pornogrpahy third-wave feminists agree on this basic point. The practitioners of 'kinky' feminisms and sexualities approach questions of sex and power in an explicit and self-aware manner. The consensual transference and exploitation of power is one of the defining features of 'kinky' sexualities. However, many sexual practices which fall under this general umbrella do not conform to much of our received wisdom on what constitutes a kinky sexual identity. Having escaped the scrutiny of academia, these practices call into question how far apart from 'normal' sexualities kink really stands. One of these is the so-called 'tickling fetish.' Through a close examination of this phenomenon and the representations of sexuality it produces, we can see how sexuality and power converge in previously unexplored ways, we can begin to trouble the orthodoxy of what is essential to 'kink,' and we can begin to chart the unexplored terrain that lies between kinky and non-kinky sexualities (or perhaps underlies both).
Tickling fetishism (known as either ‘knismolagnia’ or ‘acarophilia’) is a relatively unexamined area of human sexuality. While there are a great many sexual proclivities of which the same can be said, most of these are practices that the majority of people have never heard of, or can scarcely imagine (vorarephilia, for example, is a sexual fixation on cannibalism, as either the eater or the dish; macrophilia is an attraction to giants). Tickling, on the other hand, is an activity most of us have at least a passing familiarity with. Nearly everyone has been tickled or has tickled another person at some point in their life. Many scientists have researched ticklishness itself (see, for example, Szameitat (2009) on the characteristics of ticklish laughter, and Harris (1999) on whether it is possible to be tickled by a machine...), even Darwin and Freud. Freud, ever attuned to sexual matters, wrote that when discussing pleasurable 'stroking' sensations in children, "the analogy of tickling is forced upon our notice," (Freud, 183). So the lack of critical theory on tickling fetishism is surprising. As Kipnis said, “Tickling is one of those permeable borders: between play and sex, between sadism and fun, certainly between adult and childhood sexuality,” (Kipnis, 123). What, then, can tickling fetishism tell us about sexuality and kink? What do tickling fetishists fantasize about? In what way do knismolagniacs understand tickling to be linked to sex? Linked to power? Linked to other BDSM practices?
Thanks to the internet, we now have a perfect resource for answering many of these questions. The Tickling Media Forum is an internet community which has existed since 2000, run by and for the tickling community, and which serves as repository for thousands of megabytes of erotic media created by tickling fetishists. Users are able to browse through galleries of still images, video clips, artwork, and erotic fiction that relates to the subject of tickling (usually in an explicitly sexual way, but not always), and can post content of their own. Commercial producers of ‘tickling videos’ use this site to advertise their products, and it also serves as a social network for self-described fetishists or ‘enthusiasts,’ (membership apparently totals more than 80 000 worldwide). By exploring this vast, untapped resource, we can learn a great deal about how tickling fetishists (known to each other as 'ticklephiles') experience and interpret their sexuality.
It is important as we discuss this fetish and its representations not to fall into the trap of examining tickling-fetishism from a 'medicalizing' or 'Othering' perspective: “Medical definitions…are forged from an objective perspective; they tend to pathologise and dissect those practices rather than providing an understanding of how they are experienced and interpreted in the context of contemporary BDSM culture,” (Krywinska, 187). Therefore it behoves us to pay close attention to the narratives of ticklephiles themselves, in their own words, which are also widely available on the Tickling Media Forum. For example, in one discussion thread entitled "How did you figure it out?" members discuss how they came to realize they had a fetish. One user reports, "I knew I always liked tickling and being tickled, long before it was anything sexual. Back in second grade there was this odd picture book about a family going hiking, and one picture had a Dad tickling his daughter's feet with the caption 'Dad rubs his daughter's feet after a long hike' or something like that. I kept going back to the page over and over, not really knowing why I liked it so much... Eventually my family got a computer and the internet. One day out of curiosity I searched for 'tickling' and one of the first sites to pop up was 'Tom's Adult Tickling Website'... One of the first things I saw was a picture of a topless woman with her hands tied above her head, her feet in stocks, and a hand reaching into the shot to tickle her bare feet. At that moment I knew." Another user remembers, "I was absolutely obsessed with it for many years. I mean, I would just write the word in order to read it over and over and over and over and over...... I would look up the word in the dictionary and memorize the dictionary term. I thought about it all the time. I would spell it out in my alphabet cereal. Even in my alphabet soup. I would write it on my body in the shower with the soap..."
These narratives, typical of the average respondant, are important, because they highlight what makes the experiences of ticklephiles different from those of most people. Tickling was usually a fixation from earliest childhood, before the development of a 'mature' sexuality. This is hardly surprising: along with spanking, tickling is a ubiquitous childhood experience. Both experiences are inflected by unequal power relationships (social relationships, in these cases, being augmented by physical power); tickling even shares with spanking an aspect of punishment in some cases (Breeding, 2009). It is hardly surprising, then, that tickling should eventually become a sexual practice along the same lines as spanking.
To what degree does this proclivity manifest itself in the life of ticklephiles? The answers here seem less straightforward. Valerie Steele conceptualized fetishism as existing on a continuum, ranging from Level 1 and Level 2 ("a slight preference/strong preference exists for certain kinds of sex partners, sexual stimuli, or sexual activity") to Levels 3 and 4, where specific stimuli are "necessary for sexual arousal" or "take the place of a sex partner," (Steele, 11). Although her scale is problematic (does anyone not have strong preferences or aversions for certain sex partners and practices? Wouldn't the person who had no such preferences be the truly remarkable one?), it does recognize that sexual desires do not manifest themselves with the same intensity in all people, even those with a supposed 'fetish.' In a thread entitled "Is your desire to tickle greater than your desire for sex?" responses range from "In my case absolutely. I'd much rather tickle a woman for a half-hour than have sex with her for two hours," to "I would say they are on par, because I would like to include tickling into forplay so for me tickling would be part of my sexual activity, though tickling doesn't have to lead to sex, but it does arouse me sexualy [sic]," to "No I have to have both...but if I can only get one I would take sex every time." Most ticklephiles seem to conceive of their fetish as existing within the realm of 'regular' sexuality: they are attracted to the opposite sex (or same sex, as the case may be) and desire intercourse, and also find the act of tickling this desired sex partner erotic (Level 2 or 3). Some seem to be operating at Level 4: one response was "What is this sex you all speak of?" Yet tickling, even for the extreme ticklephile, still requires another person. Which raises the question: what, exactly, does sexuality structured by tickling fetishism look like in practice? Does it follow BDSM models of sexuality, or heteronormative models? Is tickle-fetishism unique in its representations of sex?
The video clips available on this website can help us answer some of these questions. The number of clips and videos available is enormous, and prevents a thorough analysis at this time. I have chosen to focus on two video producers, based on their fecundity (the number of videos allows us to look for coherent themes in the work), and their longevity (a long history suggests that what these producers are saying resonates with the tickling community in some way). Both offer diverse, sometimes contradictory models of sex and sexuality, and although there is a great deal of performativity involved, it often does not take the forms we usually associate with kink and BDSM.
Take, for example, the videos produced by a company called "The Laughing Gas Zone." These videos appear professionally produced, with sets and costumes, and usually feature a storyline involving some kind of kidnapping, interrogation, or revenge narrative. One recent Star Wars-themed addition has the following plot summary: "The Resistance fights the evil Imperials, who hold the galaxy in the grip of fear. The Princess has been captured, and the infamous Dark Lord has been sent to interrogate her. Defiant, the Princess refuses to reveal the location of the Resistance's base. Dark Lord threatens her, but the Princess is not so easily frightened. The Dark Lord realizes that she will have to be 'persuaded.' Sending her to his special interrogation chamber, he subjects the Princess to an unsuspecting torture that even her resolve is no match for. Soon, the haughty and defiant princess is a giggling school girl, begging for mercy, as she desperately tries to hold back the location of the Resistance's base. Will Dark Lord crack her?"
What is the appeal of this particular fantasy? While it is more lighthearted and playful than most BDSM portrayals (for example, those embodied in the film Seduction: The Cruel Woman), power and domination obviously play a crucial role. The image of a beautiful princess reduced to 'a giggling schoolgirl' is central, and speaks to the importance of role-reversal in many of these representations. The victim of this 'torture' is a dominant figure whose weakness is being exploited. This theme re-emerges in many of Laughing Gas Zone's videos: other figures subjected to tickle-torture are fearless amazons, stern prison guards, teachers, psychiatrists, and boxers, to name but a few. This is an important aspect to remember, since it is also true that nearly all the 'lees' (an abreviation of 'ticklee' that is commonly used on this website) are women: to the literal-minded critic, these videos might seem to promote the subjugation of women. Instead, the fact that is it powerful women being made 'helpless' in these fantasies suggests that they are on some level a psychological and sexual response to female empowerment as it exists in society: the sexual appeal comes from recognition and respect for actual female authority (just as some women are attracted to powerful men).
It is also important to note that the fantasy involved is tickling, rather than violence. Tickling, although represented as 'torturous,' is physically much more benign than any real form of torture. This is significant. "The word [tickle] speaks of the precarious, and so of the erotic. To tickle is, above all, to seduce, often by amusement," (Phillips, 10). What we are witnessing in these videos is the seduction-by-amusement of unobtainable figures of femininity. The fact that they frequently culminate in actual sex highlights the 'seduction' theme (coitus is apparently not common in most BDSM films, [Gallaway, 172]). Also, many of the 'lers' ('ticklers') in these videos are women, not men, troubling any notion of female 'subjugation' being enacted. If women are portrayed as 'the exploited,' they are also 'the exploiters' in many of these sexual fantasies.
The theme of women as ticklers and exploiters is exemplified by the videos produced by Realtickling, another commercial tickle-video producer. These videos also tend to follow narratives of revenge and interrogation, usually in a familiar BDSM environment, such as a dungeon. The aesthetics of these videos are also recognizable from BDSM: dim lighting, leather corsets, masks, and 'dungeon' accoutrements such as chains and wooden stocks. One video in a series called "Kristin's Dungeon," has the following description: "It seems that Rachelle is being held in a dungeon and tickled every day by Kristin. Rachelle has deliriously ticklish underarms. She begs and pleads with her tickler not to do it. But she does!" Over the course of these videos, Kristin dominates several young women, before being ambushed by a former 'victim' and tickle-tortured herself. Such reversals are a common theme in these videos, which include narratives of military interrogators using tickling on their prisoners, only to be captured by the opposing side and subjected to the same 'torture' by their victims, and so forth.
There are several noteworthy aspects of these representations. For one thing, we see the same theme of those with power being stripped of it and 'punished.' Also, while the 'lers' in these films are almost always women, the 'lees' are often men. The videos involving male 'lees' are particularly interesting since they, too, often bridge the gap between tickling and sex, but not in a traditional way. In "Lilliana Bondage Handjob", for example: "This beautiful creature has him, stretched out in her dungeon, cuts off his underwear with scissors, and proceeds to give him a long handjob. She tells him 'I'm gonna milk you dry.' And she means it! She doesn't stop stroking even long after he cums, and it drives him insane." Beyond the Freudian motif of 'stroking,' how do such representations relate to the tickling fetish? Phillips writes, "Through tickling, a child will be initiated into the helplessness and disarray of a certain primitive kind of pleasure, dependant upon the adult to hold and not to exploit the experience. And this means to stop at the blurred point, so acutely felt in tickling, at which pleasure becomes pain....It has to stop, or the real humiliation begins. The child, as the mother says, will get hysterical," (Phillips, 10). Pleasure and pain, helplessness, humiliation, hysteria: such are the themes of all these videos, whether their focus is on tickling or orgasms. It appears that such fantasies underlie the sexuality of many ticklephiles.
This notion is supported by the third sexual practice that Realtickling videos portray, in conjunction with tickling and forced orgasms: hypnosis. For example: "Amber Rain's hypnosis continues as the word 'horny' makes her just that...it leads to her touching herself and orgasming. Then she feels the tickling everywhere [as] he tickles the doll in front of her and she laughs like a helpless little girl." This time there is no dungeon setting, but again, what this has in common with tickling is the fantasy of helplessness and exploitation, as well as the use of pleasure, not pain, as the instrument of domination. Kipnis observed, "There's no particular mystery about the origin of the erotics of humiliation," (Kipnis, 123), but her reference was to spanking and hardcore BDSM. Tickling videos, although not hardcore, could be described as 'hardcore-lite' (not to be confused with 'softcore'): they express the same fantasies of hardcore BDSM, but in a benign, almost childish way, and in a way that is relatable to familiar heterosexual eroticism. These fantasies seem to represent a 'missing link' in the sexual chain that connects heteronormative and kinky sexualities.
This research represents only the most cursory examination of the phenomenon of tickling fetishism. Space constraints prevent me from taking even a passing glance at the artwork or fiction on this single website, or from mining the treasure-trove of online discussions of tickling, kink lifestyles, and sexuality that are archived therein. Such research is overdue, and will doubtless help us understand a great deal more than we do about how sexuality is produced in individuals, and how sexual identities are perceived and performed. However, we can draw tentative conclusions from what we have been able to observe thus far.
First, it seems clear that tickling fetisism has its roots in childhood experiences of power and pleasure. The role-reversals and fantasies of tickling as 'torture' speak to the childhood experience of being tickled and wishing for revenge. This not only supports theories of sexuality that link erotic desires to early experiences, but also suggests that many (if not most) children are sexual beings capable of understanding and responding to not only physical pleasure, but also the dynamics of power that enable this pleasure. Most sexual identities (kinky and non-kinky) are probably formed in very similar ways.
Second, this research suggests that we should reconsider our theories on what constitutes a 'kinky' sexual identity in the first place: while tickling fetishism is doubtless a form of kink, not every ticklephile experiences or enacts his or her desires in the same way. The same is likely true of other fetishists and BDSM enthusiasts. Therefore hard and fast rules about what kink 'is' (that it must rely on props and theatricality, that it can exist only in the realm of 'queered' sexualities) must be seriously questioned. We may have only been paying attention to those who have sought it out.
Third and most importantly, the phenomenon of tickling fetishism absolutely confirms the basic principle of feminist research into sexualities: sexuality is infused with understandings of power. Tickling fetishism and the spectrum of desires it relates to present a sexuality that bound up in power relationships. In tickling, this is the power to give pleasure as well as pain: both dictatorial and benign, fetishistic and yet other-directed. This means that it can make no sense to think of power and domination as only something that is only significant for 'fringe' or BDSM sexualities: it is a factor in sexualities that present themselves only as benign, pleasurable, and other-directed as well. Once we realize this, we can begin to trouble the imaginary boundary that separates 'normal' and transgressive sexualities, and we can come to a fuller understanding of the 'kinkiness' that animates us all.
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Gallaway, Jayson. Diary of a Viagra Fiend, Atria Books, New York, 2004
Harris, Christine R.; Christenfeld, Nicholas (1999). 'Can a machine tickle?' Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Vol. 6(3), pp. 504-510.
Kipnis, Laura. 'How to look at pornography,' Bound and Gagged: Pornogrpahy and the Politics of Fantasy in America, Duke University Press, Durham, 1999, pp. 161-178
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Phillips, Adam. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993
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The Tickling Media Forum, www.ticklingforum.com, retrieved 21 March 2010
