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

by Ogi Ogas

  Slash, gay EroRom, and paranormal romance all demonstrate that literary erotical illusions are predominantly the province of women. But the male brain can also experience erotic mental trickery in the form of text. In fact, there’s one literary erotical illusion that is the exclusive domain of the male mind.

  THE RELUCTANT CHEERLEADER

  In his seventeenth-century autobiography, the Abbé de Choisy describes the pleasure of being mistaken for a woman: “I wore embroidered corsets and gold and black robes de chambre, with sleeves lined with white satin, a girdle with a bust and a large knot of ribbons behind to mark the waist.”

  On the Internet it’s possible for a man to experience de Choisy’s unique thrills vicariously, through a genre of erotica known as transformation fiction. Web sites featuring transformation stories and graphics include Six Pack Site, TG Comics, and the largest and oldest site, Fictionmania. In transformation stories, a man is changed into a woman through a dazzling variety of methods: magic, chemicals, alien technology, genetic manipulation, or surgery. This change almost always occurs unwillingly. Sometimes a man is tricked, sometimes he suffers an accident, often he is punished for some crime of masculine hubris. Eventually, however, the victim adjusts to his change and comes to happily accept his new life, and all the perks that womanhood brings.

  We opened our book with the tragic story of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl for fourteen years before rebelling against his fate and returning to manhood. We end with an erotical illusion that enables men to derive erotic pleasure from imagining themselves as a woman. What can we learn from this strange contrast? In Chapter 7, we examined the cues that arouse gay men in order to gain a better understanding of the differences in the desire software of men and women. Transformation fiction offers the same opportunity, by revealing which cues men believe they would get to experience if only they had the body of a woman.

  Even though transformation stories contain ample psychological details about what it’s like to be a woman, nobody would mistake these desires or experiences for those of a genuine lady. The stories usually contain copious amounts of promiscuous sex, as the newly minted tart is inevitably compelled to provide sexual gratification for a variety of well-endowed men. In transformation fiction, there’s a remarkable number of policemen with a penchant for blackmailing newly created women into performing fellatio on them. Men who visit strip clubs are inevitably turned into strippers who must service all the patrons. In the story “Team Spirit,” the misogynistic football quarterback Josh is transformed into a sexy cheerleader named Honey who meets a suitable fate.

  Honey looked at Anthony, her face stricken. It’d already been over a day since he fucked her and she was feeling her pussy getting more and more aroused. She didn’t know if she could stand waiting until tomorrow for his semen.

  “Well Honey! Looks like now’s your chance to show a little team spirit,” Amy said with a spiteful grin.

  Billy took her hand and led her into a room filled with an entire football team flushed with victory, celebrating the biggest win of the year.

  “Anthony said to tell you the entertainment committee promised him $100 a pop! He said there’s a special treat if you manage to fuck every single member of the team!”

  One of the key moments in these stories is when a new woman interacts with others for the very first time. Inevitably, there is a positive reaction to her physical appearance. Men drool with lust, women confess their envy, bouncers unhook the velvet rope. Often the man wins a beauty contest, is voted homecoming queen, or wins a lap dance competition at a strip club. This is because he has inevitably been endowed with a female body stitched together with every male visual cue. In “Slow Justice,” a boy named Russ who date-raped a girl is transformed into Rose. Each morning, he becomes more and more feminine, until the transformation is complete in this scene:She could hardly believe what she saw in the mirror. Her hair was a mass of chestnut curls that framed her now heart shaped face and hung down almost to her waist. Her eyebrows were shaped to narrow lines, and her eyelashes seemed much longer. Her complexion was peaches and cream perfect. Her lips seemed fuller, and her expression fell into a natural, but very sexy pout.

  She stepped back to get a look at her figure. Her hips seemed wider, too, and her waist narrower. The nightie was cut low and barely contained her larger breasts. She posed this way and that in front of the mirror, marveling at her new figure. She felt feminine and sexy, and a growing part of her loved the feeling.

  There is an obsessive interest with breast size in much of transformation fiction. It’s rare for a newly transformed woman to have breasts smaller than a D, while double-D, double-E, and even double-G breasts are not uncommon. Feet are always small and dainty, and usually clad in four-inch heels. In fact, careful attention is paid to another component of the male fantasy of womanhood: fashion. Most transformation stories include elaborate, almost baroque descriptions of female clothing and the methodical process of putting it on: silky stockings, thong underwear, lacy bras—the stories sometimes read like an advertisement for Frederick’s of Hollywood. Shopping is often the first step of the newly transformed, followed by a trip to the salon for a makeover, complete with a sultry new coiffure, a manicure, and professional cosmetics. In the transformation comic How Annie and Toni Became Best Friends Forever Part 2, more than three-fourths of the 125 panels feature shopping. There’s even a sequence of twenty consecutive panels that simply show the new girl in different dresses.

  Here is a list of some of the most common two-word phrases in stories on Fictionmania:a boy

  a dress

  his mother

  a girl

  my new

  the doctor

  the mall

  to wear

  little girl

  my mother

  high heels

  the old

  her new

  to change

  the boys

  the mirror

  “The mall” is a common place to shop for something “to wear,” such as “a dress” or “high heels.” “The doctor” usually confirms that “a girl” is no longer “a boy.” Sometimes the “little girl” simply confirms “the change” in “the mirror.” Interestingly, “the mother” usually plays an affirming role in transformation fiction; the father features less prominently.

  Contrasting the male conception of the female mind with the real thing is as amusing as it is illuminating. Men, imagining women to share their psychology, envision becoming promiscuous women with an overriding interest in anonymous sex. Transformation stories obsess over penises, with far more time spent on the details of other men’s penises than the loss of the main character’s own penis, which is usually small to begin with. Intriguingly, when men become women, they often become bimbos as well. Boys who are straight-A students as males become C students as girls. Men who run international financial firms are barely able to survive as secretaries. Though fan fiction plumbs the emotions of its heroines in great detail, in transformation fiction the transformed heroines seem to desire only shopping, dressing up, and sex.

  The audience for transformation fiction is mainly heterosexual males, though actual transsexuals appear to form a significant portion of the audience. In fact, a recent study found that enjoyment of transformation stories was the single factor that best predicted whether a transsexual would eventually seek sex change surgery. Nevertheless, judging from online comments, most fans of transformation stories don’t appear to seek sex reassignment, though many may dress up in women’s clothes. A significant number of fans are married, heterosexual men.

  So why do straight men get turned on by the thought of themselves as a woman—a desire that psychologists call autogynephilia? It may ultimately be a kind of erotical illusion that combines the sexual submission cue with the male visual cues of female anatomy, as well as psychological cues such as female pleasure (since the transformed woman usually experiences sexual ecstasy), and sperm competition (since she freq
uently experiences group or serial sex). Since searches for transformation fiction are moderately correlated with searches for other kinds of submission porn, perhaps reading transformation fiction activates the subcortical sexual circuitry associated with female sexual submission.

  It may be that some men are born with a stronger connection between the hypothalamic submission circuitry and the subcortical reward system than in other men, and this connection manifests itself as an inexplicable, unconscious urge to assume the submissive role. Psychologists draw attention to the fact that in transformation stories, the man is always forced to change against his will. Some external force compels the transformation, which is initially resisted by the man. This may reflect an unconscious (i.e., subcortical) urge that imposes itself on the conscious (i.e., cortical) mind. This urge feels like an external compulsion. But once this subcortical compulsion is accepted by the conscious mind, a powerful psychological satisfaction can result. Perhaps this is why most stories end up with a happy ending, the new girl living as an internationally famous teen pop star or leading the dance as the high school prom queen—or even serving as a brainwashed but satisfied high-end prostitute for wealthy businessmen.

  A man gets to feel the pleasure of his submissive circuitry by living as a woman who is meek, ditzy, and ravished by dominant men. He gets to experience the visual pleasures of youth cues (a very popular category of transformation stories is “age regression”) and female anatomy cues. Most transformees spend considerable time ogling their female anatomy in the mirror, describing their new breasts and hips and derriere with the same level of assiduous detail that we find in male porn. The fondness for group sex and penisfocused promiscuity also reflects typical male cues. However, even within this experience of sexual submission, the male is still focused on the sexual pleasure of the partner. There is far more emphasis on the pleasure the “real” male characters receive from the transformee then there is on the transformee’s own pleasure—though the new woman does usually experience thunderous orgasms that far outclass anything she experienced as a man.

  It’s possible that transformation fiction also involves a disruption or deception of the brain’s erotic body map we speculated on in Chapter 7. The extrastriate body area in the cortex shows different activation when looking at others’ body parts than when looking at one’s own body parts. Perhaps by imagining that one’s own body is other, one can create a neural feedback loop that tricks the male desire software into believing it is perceiving external cues of female anatomy.

  But for some fans of transformation fiction, it may simply be a desire to be the center of sexual attention. To have everyone lust after you. If women get to have a Magic Hoo Hoo, then why can’t I?

  Erotical illusions—including T-girl porn, paranormal romance, slash fiction, and transformation fiction—are unrecognized pinnacles of human imagination, as inventive and creative as the sushi in the Ginza district of Japan or the harmonizing melodies of the Beatles. These illusions reveal a hidden fact about all erotic experiences: that what ultimately binds sexual cues together into a single experience is our imagination.

  Many believe that by reducing our desires into a set of narrow biological cues, we eliminate all the magic of sex. Instead, by identifying those cues, we can liberate ourselves and appreciate the magic more clearly. A penis and a female body can be combined within the sorcery of the male sexual imagination to produce an entirely new creation. Dominant men and irresistible women can be magnified by the erotic artistry of the female sexual imagination to produce thrilling tales of vampires and demons.

  By investigating the software of our sexual brain, we can finally appreciate the true nature of human desire. There is no such thing as an absolute, unitary “male sexuality” or “female sexuality,” but instead a number of gender-specific software components, subject to the vagaries of biology and experience. We each respond to our own unique pattern of sexual cues—some male, some female, some fixed, some flexible. Cues can flip, change, or transform, resulting in endless variations of sexual identity that defy easy labeling. But it is our sexual cues, our finite, identifiable, biological cues, that grant us all the pleasures of sex.

  Our cues release us, even as they bind us.

  CONCLUSION

  Happy Ending or Happily-Ever-After?

  Different but equal.

  —Roy Baumeister, social psychologist

  Now that we’ve finally seen what’s on the end of a billion forks, we can draw some conclusions. One of the most encouraging is this: if you are a woman, then no matter what your attributes—big or skinny, A-cup or double-E, mother or grandmother—you are the sexual ideal and greatest erotic fantasy for an abundance of men. Similarly, if you are a man, no matter what your character—aggressive or pacifist, witty or stoic, rich or penniless, scarred or delicate—there are plenty of women who can fall in love with you, and if their love is reciprocated, feel intense desire for you.

  Some of us may have a harder time finding a sexual match than others, and perhaps the one we find the most attractive may not reciprocate our sentiments. Sexual attraction may not always lead to long-term compatibility. Fortunately, the Internet—in addition to being the genie of a million squicks—offers myriad new ways of finding someone whose desires complement our own.

  Why is human sexuality so diverse, with homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality appearing so often alongside heterosexuality? Over the past few hundred thousand years, the design of women’s brains have diverged more and more from men’s brains in order to manage the different challenges confronted by each sex: the primary challenge of long-term investment planning for women, the primary challenge of attaining status for men. But as the software of the male brain has become ever more different from the software of the female brain, this has increased the number of opportunities for disruptions during neural development. Sometimes female software ends up with male components, sometimes male software gets female components. The very gulf that separates a woman’s brain from a man’s brain is responsible for all the wondrous diversity of human sexuality.

  As our world becomes more technologically sophisticated and socially complex, this has introduced even more variations in the way our sexual cues get set and triggered. Our sexual software, originally designed to play the odds, now allows us to play the field, searching for partners who match our unique sexual tastes with unprecedented precision.

  The greatest hurdle to sexual harmony is ignorance of the fact that members of the other sex (and other sexual orientations) are fundamentally different from ourselves. We all instinctively feel that other people must be just like us. “It just seems so natural to like men,” insisted one thirty-year-old gay man when asked why he liked gay porn that featured straight men. “To be completely honest, I guess I believe that all guys must feel the same attraction to men that I do, but straight guys just repress these feelings. So when I see a straight guy having sex with other men, it feels like validation. It’s like—see, he’s just like me after all.”

  Similarly, many straight men believe that, deep down, all women secretly yearn for casual, no-strings-attached sex with strangers. Many straight women believe men have been socialized to be aggressive and promiscuous—but hide a secret emotional life that, with the proper attention, will blossom into tenderness and monogamy. It’s hard for us to accept that other people’s most intimate desires are different from our own—and when confronted with this fact, we often dismiss their desires as deviant or dangerous or just plain hurtful. When literary scholar Janice Radway asked the women in a romance discussion group about male sexuality, the women reported that they did not want to adopt male standards; they wished that men would learn to adhere to theirs. Doubtless, most men feel the same way. By identifying and understanding one another’s sexual cues, we can develop greater comfort, confidence, and compassion; only then will we have an authentic opportunity to truly connect.

  Some might argue that not all of our sexual cues should be ind
ulged—that some should be ignored or repressed. Science can’t offer any moral prescription about which cues should be judged acceptable and which unacceptable; but science does tell us that it’s difficult or impossible to modify men’s rigid cues, and even though women’s tastes are more plastic, it’s simply not possible to shut off the sleuthing of Miss Marple or her detectives. It’s also worth remembering that at various points in the twentieth century, the medical profession and mainstream society were in perfect agreement that certain sexual activities were unacceptable, including masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, adolescent make-out sessions, homosexuality, and interracial sex.

  Our brain has a conscious, thinking cortex that is fully capable of pondering human sexuality and forming its own judgment. That’s part of the joy of being human—figuring out what to do about the unique pattern of cues that nature and experience have endowed us with. We can accept our fantasies without becoming slaves to them. Maybe you’ll explore your own cues in solitude; perhaps you’ll seek those places where your cues intersect someone else’s.

  But a lucid consideration of our unique suite of cues holds tremendous potential for deep personal fulfillment—a fulfillment we may not be able to experience from anything else. As American author Edward Abbey writes, “Modern men and women are obsessed with the sexual; it is the only realm of primordial adventure still left to most of us. Like apes in a zoo, we spend our energies on the one field of play remaining; human lives otherwise are pretty well caged in by the walls, bars, chains, and locked gates of our industrial culture.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Accumulating and interpreting a billion wicked thoughts required the support, guidance, and kindness of a great many folks.