Why do we want to fuck monsters?

Hear me out: the xenomorph from Alien would absolutely get it. There’s just something about its expertly chiselled bone structure, proboscis-like inner jaw (what that tongue do, etc) and oil-slick skin that makes me go: yeah, alright then. Fuck me up.

My desire (fantasy, kink) is not just limited to the xenomorph, nor is it particularly unusual. At least once a month my algorithm will dish me up some lustful monster fancam or other; Pennywise (hot); Pinhead (smoking); Godzilla (immediate smash); and, more recently, Count Orlok (you get the point). This lust for monsters is not limited to TikTok: take a look on Tumblr or DeviantArt or FetLife and you will easily encounter that same lust and desire funnelled into content way less PG than a simple 30-second video soundtracked by Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy”. Turns out, there are self-professed monster fuckers everywhere. But where does the sexual attraction to monsters come from? What is culturally and psychologically at play here?

These questions are largely what led Brighton-based photographer Amber Valence to produce her latest zine, Seduce the Beast. Consisting of text, artwork, porn, original photography and an incredible Monster Fucking Scale – from Rookie Monster Fucker (Edward Cullen, Legolas, mermaids, Rhysand in ACOTAR) to Master Monster Fucker (Cthulhu, Seraphim, the malevolent mist in Stephen King’s The Mist, Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water) – Seduce the Beast is a holistic, all-encompassing creative exploration of teratophilia, the sexual attraction to monsters. Born out of an aching curiosity and lifelong magnet-like pull to monsters, Valence began researching teratophilia in 2022 after asking her Instagram followers which monsters they wanted to have sex with and why. “I was inundated with replies and wasn’t prepared for the huge response,” she says. “It turns out most people want to fuck monsters”.

Saraliza Anzaldúa is a monster theorist and assistant professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Anzaldúa, who began researching teratophilia and monster erotica in 2014 after noticing patterns of erotic tension between humans and monsters in literature, says it is inherently political. To be a monster is to be an Other, something marginalised people know all too well. This familiarity is something that Anzaldúa says, consciously or subconsciously, may be leading more and more women, queer and trans people into the world of monster loving. “Monster erotica can actually be this kind of healing psychic experience because it’s not merely the shadows of the world we’re dealing with, it’s our own shadow as well,” Anzaldúa says. Perhaps it’s no wonder then that women and LGBTQ+ people are far more likely than cis-het men to have this kind of sexual fantasy.

Like monsters, marginalised people are scrutinised – monsterised, othered – for failing to conform to society’s ever-shifting beauty standards. What monster-loving does is subvert these forcibly prescribed standards, imagining new alternatives and new forms of beauty and attraction. “There’s just so much plasticity where we can not only play with ourselves and how we view ourselves, but also how we view the world, and it’s this way to imagine alternatives,” says Anzaldúa.

London-based sculpture and make-up artist Lily Bloom rarely shies away from the monstrous and grotesque in her work, expertly crafting pieces which, to the non-monster lover (read: tasteless, boring, unsophisticated) may come across as plainly gross or unsightly. Influenced by her love for horror and her need to understand the way that she looked, Bloom began creating monstrous looks on herself as a way to transcend her own self-perception. “It was putting something on in order to take it off and recognise myself again,” Bloom says. “It’s playing God.”

In creating her monstrous make-up looks, Bloom surrenders her ordained allegiance to patriarchal conformity in favour of something which benefits only her, a reclamation of autonomy. “To become a monster felt really freeing – I would look in the mirror and, because I had done something specific to myself, would understand then the way I looked, and create something from it that felt really positive,” explains Bloom. “Those were the only images that I loved of myself.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Bloom – like Valence, like Anzaldúa, like myself – is also a monster lover. While identification with the Monster is one explanation for teratophilia – one that is not to be understated – it is only one avenue of explaining what’s at play here. For Bloom and Valence, a huge part of the pull for them is fear. “Through creating Seduce the Beast, I realised the degree to which I eroticise my fears,” says Valence. “As a teenager, I remember being frightened of a monster known as The Rake. So my brain was like, ‘The Rake isn’t scary, he’s your boyfriend.’” Bloom notes being hunted and chased as a large part of her fantasy.

Indeed, there’s plenty of overlap between teratophilia and BDSM/kink. CNC, forced consent, mind control, breeding/oviposition (egg laying), vore (being eaten), transition, and being hunted are all common kinks and desires expressed in monster lover literature, erotica, fanfic, and forums. With these sorts of sexual fantasies, it’s important to remember that they are just that: fantasies. To quote the YouTuber ContraPoints (AKA Natalie Wynn): “Fantasies are not literal wishes. Fantasies construct situations where emotional needs are met and inhibitions to pleasure are removed.”

Here, Wynn – discussing the philosophy and politics of sexual fantasies in her three-hour video essay on the Twilight series – touches on something integral to teratophilia: it is imagined, and largely impossible. Teratophilia, and indeed all sexual fantasies, provide a space for whatever freaky shit someone wants to do with someone – be it a person or Monster – without actually having to do it, as well as a safe space for the person to explore their own desires which may be repressed due to social or cultural norms.

“Desire prefers the hunt to the kill,” Wynn says in her video later on. Monster fuckers may not actually want to put themselves in the way of potential harm or death, but the thought is still erotic – two things can be true at once. Teratophilia fantasies thrive on and fully operate within the world of the ‘hunt’, ie the imagined. And when it comes to fictional monsters – who can be violent, scary and aggressive – versus cishet men – who can be violent, scary, and aggressive – the cognitive dissonance that a teratophilia fantasy requires provides a much-needed release and, in some cases, reclamation of sexual autonomy. “​​I think in some cases, [monster erotica and teratophilia] is definitely a reclamation of power by showing no, actually, what you take to be normative is really an abomination, and what you take to be abomination is actually how the world is supposed to work,” says Anzaldúa. “We're supposed to be able to choose our identities and be ourselves without the threat of death.”