The Fellowship of the Beached Whale – Thoughts on pregnancy fetishism

Posted on | February 23, 2009 | 8 Comments |

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A moderately exhausted Yuribou reporting back after a week spent on Labour ward at Warwick hospital.

Unsurprisingly, this week made me think about childbirth. Childbirth is an interesting phenomenon. It’s an experience that almost all women (and most men!) will go through at some point in their lives, but for the most part it is secreted away in hospitals or behind locked doors. To watch or give birth seems to me a kind of initiation into the world of adulthood (or in the case of teenage pregnancies, a shove off the cliff of childhood to land with an almighty thump). It seems somehow the most embarassing and yet empowering thing that a woman can do with herself and now I finally understand why women will fight to the death for the right to have a baby.

The labour ward itself is a kind of temple to the pregnant woman. Upon reaching the right stage in labour, women are ushered into rooms, where lots of other women (and a couple of men – me and the husband) worship them and shout encouragement while they hurl obscenities in our general direction. The offerings are pretty minimal though – Entonox and sports drink don’t really cut it when you’re trying to push something the size of a melon out of your vagina. The illusion is only broken when the obstetrician waltzes in and delivers the baby with a flash of scissors and forceps only to disappear just as quickly in a puff of consultanty-ness.

On reflection, perhaps the obstetricians act more like God.

Anyway, why am I talking about this kind of thing – surely this isn’t relevant in a blog talking about fetishes and yuri? Well…no. Pregnancy has been a niche fetish throughout the world of pornography for as long as I remember and probably a long time before. It’s not rare for Western pornstars to continue working while they are pregnant, although these videos probably appeal to a different…section of their fans. Pregnancy is a pretty common niche fetish in the world of Japanese hentai as well. The question I want to ask is – how has this wonderful and triumphal act of womanhood been transformed into something so base as a sexual fetish?

First of all, lets take a look at the state of women through real life pregnancy. Despite growing ever further towards their goal of looking like a beached whale throughout their 40 week journey, libidos (I am told) yo-yo between feeling like a beached whale and feeling like a sexual goddess. Presumably because the hormones are all over the place and there is no more worry about getting pregnant (though it would be amusing if you could add another one in there at a later date).

Now let’s take a look at Western “preggo” pornography. Western pornography serves as one of the only industries where women lord over men and carries an overriding feeling of female dominance. The girls may be sluttish and get done hard, but at the end of the day, it’s the men that lose control and the women somehow always appear the victor. So therefore, most pregnant pornography (except the low budget rape and ultra-niche borderline illegal stuff) serves to glorify the pregnant woman in the peak of her femininity. I suppose there’s an element of “increased perversity factor” in watching a woman already impregnated by someone else play around with other men as well.

In contrast, Japanese hentai’s popular rape themes pervade into this genre as well… Most pregnancy storylines in hentai focus on either women impregnated against their will, becoming enslaved and being forced to have sex with lots of men or women already pregnant getting raped by lots of men. In other words, pregnancy is used mainly as an extension to the already popular rape fetish.

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Let me explain further.

The pregnancy fetish can be summarily split into three main areas:

- Impregnation fetish
- Pregnancy fetish (and Birth fetish – which is VERY niche)
- Lactation fetish

Impregnation fetish

Impregnation fetish is similar in principle to the Western pornographic theme of “surprise creampie” which involves a (stronger) man ejaculating inside a woman who has told him before (with her terrible acting skills) not to. To much protest. She then lets it drip out of her and proclaims that she must be pregnant now to much laughter all round. It could almost be taken as a comedic device since I don’t think anyone would really believe that that pornstar would actually get pregnant.

However, in the world of 2D things are much more serious – presumably because it’s not real and so you don’t have to feel so seriously about the consequences of teenage pregnancy, poverty and ridicule that you would if it was. The most similar impregnation theme to Western porn is the one that is basically an extension of the generic rape. Basically, the theme runs the same as a rape scene, but the girl shouts not to come inside her as she’ll get pregnant. Sound familiar? It should do.

The other way impregnation is approached in hentai is more unique to the genre – the “Feels too good to stop”. In this cliche, the girl tells the boy she likes that he can have sex with her without protection, but he mst promise not to come inside her. Naturally, he sticks it in and either one or both of them then realise that now they are coupled at the hip because it just FEELS TOO GOOD. Resulting in lovely sloppy seconds.

So the genres of hentai that impregnation fetish is most connected to is rape (both frape and trape), and happy sex.

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Pregnancy fetish

The pregnancy fetish itself I have already discussed, though the very very niche fetish where the very act of birth is described I haven’t (for obvious reasons). It can be considered an extension to the rape, slavery and impregnation storyline as I have yet to see an eromanga where a birth takes place in a happy environment. I’m sure there are some.

Lactation fetish

Lactation I discussed briefly in my fetish season this Christmas under “Bakunyuu”. Lactation, surrpisingly, is a completely separate fetish to the rest of the pregancy based fetishes, since in the world of fictional hentai it can occur with or without actual pregnancy being depicted. The storyline cliches explaining this that are most often rehashed are:

- Those breasts are so big that they must produce milk.
- She’s just so lewd and dirty that she also cums with her breasts. Only it’s milk, not cum.
- She was pregnant, but the child has mysteriously disappeared.
- She is a different species who conveniently have enormous breasts and always produce milk.

…and so forth.

In fact, lactation is very rarely shown as a part of the pregnancy fetish since pregnancy themed mangas generally stop either when the girl becomes pregnant (mostly) or just after the birth (rarely). Therefore, as I alluded to with my fetish month post, lactation has become merely an addition to the large breast (bakunyuu) fetish, rather than the pregnancy (ninpu/bonyuu) fetish.

In line with my “extra fluids increase perversity” theory, lactation adds an extra source of squirtyness to a hentai scene and also an increased sense of “visible orgasm” as she (inexplicably) squirts milk when she comes. There’s also more extreme themes that are sometimes explored such as Breast expansion or the physiologically mind boggling Nipple penetration.

Conclusion

So in terms of pregnancy fetish, we can disregard lactation completely and focus on the other two. It is interesting that impregation fetish material is split pretty equally between happy and non-consensual themes, while pregnancy fetish material is almost exclusively non-consensual and even progresses into much darker S&M, slavery and even guro themes. In fact, I don’t think it would be wrong to say that there are two quite separate types of fan – people who like to see girls impregnated with either frape or happy themes and people who like the whole non-consensual package of impregnation and forced pregnancy. And then there are the people who just like seeing girls coming with milk squirting out of their breasts. How mad is that?

Milk coming out of nipples. Never heard of such a thing…

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Category: Editorials, Hentai/Ero-games

Comments

8 Responses to “The Fellowship of the Beached Whale – Thoughts on pregnancy fetishism”

Joku
February 23rd, 2009 @ 1:10 pm

Ah, one more fetish I won’t ever understand. I mean it doesn’t look good anymore if someones pregnant. And the “not getting pregnant while having sex thing” is not really an explanation, its 2D and there mustn’t be pregnancy and it could also be a problem with his semen so there could be no pregnancy.

I really would like to know what makes the fetish appealing. But that could also only appear because in the actual Yuri ~ Yuri ftw ~ there wouldn’t be any pregnancy, and maybe thats why I’m not really interested in it.
Hendayo
February 23rd, 2009 @ 4:44 pm

Ah, one of my favorites. For me personally, I think preggo as a fetish came out of incest via the inbreeding sub-fetish, which is very common in the (American) erotic stories that were my primary introduction to porn, but fairly rare in hentai (although it does occur–I’m thinking of one of the stories in Rhapsody, the ending of Aunt & Me/Mom & Me/Aunt & Mom, and a panel on the ED incest article from something I can’t identify but would pay to get hold of). I suppose it’s mostly one of your “enhancers” in this context–not only am I fucking my sister/mom/daughter, I’m knocking her up! Ain’t I kinky?

However, it’s gone from that to a full-blown independent fetish for me–I’m just as happy looking at pics from alt.binaries.erotica.pregnant as I am reading my favorite stories. I just plain find pregnant women hot.

Do you have any recommendations for relatively rape-free, reasonably vanilla pregnancy hentai? I’m not interested in any serious bondage, any trape, and most especially not in any of the pseudo-pregnancy weirdness involving aliens/tentacles. A basic “guy fucks his way through the maternity ward” or a followup to an impregnation story would be what I’d like.

Or I can hope Peach Princess picks up Blazing Knocked-up Classmates…
Hendayo
February 23rd, 2009 @ 4:54 pm

Oh, and one more thing (forgive the spamming): one of my favorite authors of girl-girl stories, a girl who goes by the nym “Oopy”, has included magic/fantasy-based f/f impreg in at least one of her works, so in the right setting, you could have impreg yuri. (Not to mention the obvious potential in futa…)
yuribou
February 23rd, 2009 @ 7:43 pm

Hey Hendayo – Interesting thoughts – I wasn’t aware of the origins of the impreg fetish in Western 2d stuffs so good to hear your side of things…

There are a lot of happysex pregnant mangas, but I don’t collect them, so I couldn’t recommend them. I do have a lot of ones in the futanari category though…
Alexeon
February 24th, 2009 @ 11:19 am

Ive seen a few doujins where the girl gets pregnant and at the end there is a flash-forward to after the kid is born and they all live happily ever after. They arent that common, though.

I wonder if it would be possible to have images in the blog only be visible by scrolling down from the main page when its loaded. I have the blog set as a homepage but with the new wordpress system images are easily visible with just loading the page up and this could be dangerous in my environment. :P

Just a thought.
Hendayo
February 24th, 2009 @ 2:37 pm

I seem to be having some trouble commenting; when I post, nothing shows up, but when I try again, WordPress claims I’ve already made that comment. Issues with the new version?
SK
February 25th, 2009 @ 8:33 pm

Well, Pregnancy isn’t one of my fav fetishes. But it is nice how it can be combined with other fetishes, especially the BSDM stuff. I think in that situation, the additional vulnerability of the pregnant woman adds a new level of debauchery.
In my experience, quite a few doujins end on a “wow, that was so much cum, I must be pregnant”, or at least a mention of pregnancy, in the vein of enjoying it too much to care about consequences. I think it’s a nice emotional touch, which is what I like about yuri.
Also, great title! While working in a maternity ward must be tiring, I guess it does feel rewarding. Although doesn’t it get kinda old after the 20th birth?
Jaden
March 1st, 2009 @ 6:43 am

For myself I find a pregnant woman to be more sensual than sexual. In so much that this is their zenith of femininity. I will be honest I do enjoy since it does add an extra bit of kink. Plus in quite a few stories I have read a common thing to see is when the chance of pregnancy is mentioned you will usually see the woman “so full” of semen that it somehow caused her abdomen to swell giving the appearance of pregnancy. And that is just so stupid it is funny at times. But to get to the basics when a woman is pregnant there is weight gain, I feel that curves are sexy. And plus usually woman are less likely to shave and I love hair. Plus there is that glow that just lights up the features. So in my case various factors just seem to line up.

Also if I may indulge myself a little, does anyone else remember the “Miracle of Life” video that they showed in health classes. I remember when anyone would discuss it they would go on and on about how it was the most graphic and disturbing thing in the world. And then I finally saw it and was shocked by how frankly plain it was, and how everyone around was disgusted. Yet these same people never bat an eyelash when they show the bodies after car wrecks. How is that birth is the horror show?