Formicophilia: People are Upset that Bugs Cannot Consent to Sexual Acts
Don’t Just Eat The Bugs — Include Them in Your Sex Life
While several publications have encouraged people to eat bugs as part of a sustainable diet, the bug popularization has taken a bizarre turn: from the dinner table to the bedroom.
Publications such as CNN have provided lengthy articles praising entomophagy, but Vice has gone one further with a video on ‘Formicophilia’ where sexual acts include the use of bugs.
But it goes further than that: according to a self-confessed formicophile, one of the gripes held by the kink community towards bug play concerns the bug’s ability to consent to these acts involving humans.
Vice magazine–infamous for showcasing strange and explicit sexual fetishes, drawing negative attention from wide swathes of the public–has published a video to its YouTube channel titled, “VICE Guide to Sex: Bug Play aka Formicophilia” exposing a relatively unknown sexual fetish were consenting parties use bugs as a form of sensual stimulation.
The video starts, “when I’m feeling insects crawling all over me, it creates this sensation lashing up and down my body that’s just pure pleasure… and feeling that closeness with these creatures makes me feel wonderful and loved inside.”
Immediately after the opening monologue finishes, the video cuts to a scene where an earthworm is stuck to the back of a bald man’s head.
The protagonist of the video is a polyamorous male who goes by the pseudonym, “Katydid.”
Katydid goes onto explain the origins of his kinks and sexuality.
He reveals that, during his childhood, he would spend a lot of time in the mountains.
He also reveals that he has, indeed, masturbated in a lot of places.
Katydid admits to laying down naked on hot rocks and enjoying the sensation of several ants crawling all over his body.
Behind The Media’s Obsession With Eating Bugs — And Cannibalism
The video then goes onto another interviewee who went by the name, “Wintersong Tashlin,” and is a self-avowed ‘BDSM expert’ and ‘Formicophilia educator.’
Tashlin explains that his bug kink began at the age of sixteen, when he found a slug, placed it on himself and allowed it to freely roam on his body.
“Emotionally, in an erotic sense it was very, very, intense and very exciting and very forbidden,” Tashlin says.
Shockingly, Tashlin explains the eroticism in male genital stimulation of earthworms–specifically, the unpredictability of sticking one’s penis into a container of earthworms and permitting the worms to writhe around.
Apparently, some formicophiles experience arousal through pain sensations; some obtain a thrill by using bugs which bite, according to Tashlin.
The video later delves into social acceptability of formicophilia.
Tashlin later talks about how he carries out his fetish, brandishing a container with ‘superworms.’
The worms have “sharp” feet and are known to bite.
Tashlin opens up about how he can induce biting by applying honey to the area he wishes to be stimulated.
Tashlin then speaks about certain taboos within the community:
“Oh, there’s certainly a taboo in the kink community around formicophilia play.
“There are definitely folks who have concerns around consent.
“I don’t worry much over about issues of consent if I’m talking about a maggot because that maggot has no higher reasoning or thought process, really of any kind.
“I very much don’t feel that way about, say, my dog. My dog clearly is capable of making decisions and doing what she does and doesn’t want to do–and thus, her consent is important which is one of a myriad reasons since why I don’t have sex with my dog.”
He goes onto recall an anecdote during a class where a student tells him, “that earthworm hasn’t consented to being on your genitals.”
To which he replied, “that earthworm doesn’t know that it’s on my genitals.”
He adds that people only get “weird” if genitals are involved, implying that few outspokenly vent their qualms over earthworms being sold as bait.
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