NEW YORK CITY—“Cuckold porn,” the genre that depicts men watching their (supposed) wives or girlfriends having sex with other men, has been one of the fastest-growing categories in terms of popularity among porn viewers over the past several years, with Pornhub statistics showing a 57 percent rise between 2013 and 2016 in searches for “cuckold” and related terms, with 1.75 million people coming to the site every month looking for videos depicting scenes of cuckoldery.
But the fetishization of adultery and unmarried “cheating” relationships is not confined to the fantasies presented by porn. In an article published June 1, the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post newspaper explored the “Stag & Vixen” lifestyle, in which couples incorporate female “cheating” into their personal sexual repertoire.
The article focused on one couple in particular, who are not named in the article for privacy reasons, but who go by the Twitter handle "@justplaying76"—though the Post article incorrectly gives their Twitter ID as "@Ourlittlesecret," which instead is the user name for the actual account name.
In the article, husband “Shane,” age 38, explains that he prefers the term “Stag & Vixen” to “cuckold” because that term doesn’t carry connotations that he is suffering humiliation when his wife “Susie,” 36, has sex with another man, or “Bull,” either with him looking on, or on her own.
“It’s a description that suits us perfectly as there is no humiliation or denial involved,” Shane told the Post. “I prefer to be a voyeur, but occasionally, I’ll join in. Watching my wife with another man is a big turn-on for me. It’s like foreplay. As much as I love watching, I can’t wait for the Bull to leave so I can ravish Susie myself.”
They became initiated into the “Stag & Vixen” lifestyle after posting their own homemade porn on their Twitter page—without revealing their faces to preserve their anonymity.
“We started the Twitter account and started posting naked pictures. I enjoyed the exhibitionism and the compliments. I got talking to a guy who lived in our city and he asked me out for coffee. Shane was all for it,” Susie recounted in the article. “Sex with another man was appealing because Shane and I have been together since I was 18. I felt like a teenager who was dating again.”
While “Stag & Vixen” relationships, at least as exemplified by the couple depicted in the Post story, may shun the “humiliating” aspect of the “cuckold” phenomenon, the term has spread into political discourse—for the very reason that “cuckold” or “cuck” is supposed to connote some sort of male submissiveness or figurative emasculation.
The term “cuck” has been used by right wingers online as a way to insult liberals as somehow unmanly. But according to research by the Philly Voice news site, searches for cuckold porn are actually more common in “red” states—that is, states that vote predominantly for right-wing Republicans—and of the top five cuck-porn-searching states, three—West Virginia, New Hampshire and Alabama—were “red,” one “blue” (that is, Democratic—in this case Vermont) and one, Kentucky, “purple, but leaning Republican."
Photo by Gabriel S. Delgado C./Wikimedia Commons
