Welcome to Enquire Within, our fortnightly newsletter exploring your sexual curiosities and confusions. Answering your questions is writer, journalist, podcaster, and person we trust, Madison Griffiths. This week, we're investigating all things Vorarephilia.
Question:
"I’ve recently developed a fantasy about being eaten. It’s come on totally unprompted and takes different forms. Sometimes I get shrunken down before being eaten. Sometimes I get eaten in one go by a whale. It’s never graphic or violent. I just really want to be consumed as a whole. What does this mean and where could this have come from?"
Answer:
This may be a tough thing to swallow, sweet reader… but I’m going to give you a lot to gobble up. It appears, according to my diagnosis and the copious amount of intriguing and—at times, a little perturbing—perusing I spent on various Internet deep-dives, that you are a vorer: an individual aroused by the idea of being swallowed whole. Like all fetishes, vore is multidimensional, complex and rich with possibilities. It appears, according to your description, that you might be more stirred by ‘soft vore’, the idea of being swallowed whole, as opposed to ‘hard vore’… which involves being chewed up, masticated, and having parts of you devoured. But, you’re not alone, and I’m going to invite you into the slobbery goodness of the vore community, the bread and butter of kink if you will.
Vore is an established fetish that centres around the fantasy of being consumed. Often, the vorer is the ‘prey’, the individual intent on being gobbled up, and the predator can assume a variety of forms: be it human, mythical, or animal (like the whale you mentioned). Despite vore being relatively uncharted in the mainstream’s understanding of what kink is, there is often a considerable crossover between vore and the rich, fantasy world of furries, a misunderstood and oft taunted subgroup of kinksters who role-play as fluffy critters.
You ask where this could’ve come from, but vore as a concept… or even a cautionary tale, has sunk its teeth into folklore and popular culture for eons. For Lee, a vorer who spoke to VICE, reading Little Red Riding Hood as a wee lad terrified the hell out of him until it didn’t, his fear of a mendacious wolf donned in elderly clothes as it licked its lips eventually… exciting him. When he reached adolescence, there was comfort—serenity, even—in the idea of being gulped down by some congenial, large whale. Transfixed on the story of James Bartley, a sailor who claimed to have been swallowed whole by a sperm whale and who went on to describe the inside of the whale’s belly as something akin to “velvet walls”, Lee’s ears piqued.
"Jonah and the Whale" from the Qur'an, found on Eka's Portal.
I’m not going to lie: the stigma surrounding vore is pretty hideous, with the most vanilla of society pairing it with the real-life act of cannibalism. But, if I were you, I’d take these boring suppositions with a pinch of salt, as vore thrives off fantasy, off invention, not the real-life need to consume another person. Many vorers use platforms such asEka’s Portal, a vore-centric website, to unearth their deepest, tastiest reveries through art, discussion and interactive stories.
As for what this means, it’s impossible to pinpoint an origin story without getting all Freudian on you. But, people have tried. Max Plenke, a writer for Mic, sat down with three young men into vore and concluded that vore is an unassuming and safe way to feel sexually gratified without having to delve into what one’s sexuality, in actuality, might be. So, if a dude imagines being eaten by another big, burly dude, he can tip-toe around potentially being into men and instead just find solace and sexiness in the first premise: the being eaten part. He doesn’t have to choose a label, he can just… be. What is more concerning about this diagnosis, I think, is that we live in a world where an angsty teenager terrified of the reality of being into fellas can divert his fears, and find console in being gobbled up instead. Because… no homo. Just eat me, daddy.
The more I discover about vore, the more it makes sense through the lens of BDSM and its ties to power-play. It’s not as outlandish as people are led to believe, especially given the stories that have permeated throughout our weird, little lives: ones that centre around a villain who wants to gobble up its prey: be it an evil sorceress or witch (think:HanselandGretel),a wolf intent on eating its hunt (think:Little Red Riding Hood), and—wink, wink—a giant whale (think:Jonah the Whale). The vorer is the sub in this, it seems: the impotent victim inescapably meeting its dominant match. But, swallowing aside, the mouth isn’t always totally meant to signal danger or dominance. We see, throughBeauty and the Beast, Sleeping BeautyandThe Princess and the Frog,that the mouth is a source of healing, fondness and redemption, regardless of species.
If I were you, I’d step into the belly of the beast and find what pocket of vore gets you going. If that means reading James Bartley’s diary, the original sperm whale’s snack, or perusing through the pixelated archives of drawings of humungous My Little Pony ponies eating prey on Eka’s Portal, then go forth. Maybe even give your lover’s toes a little nibble and see how that feels. It’s time to put your finger in every pie of the world wide web. Piece of cake!
