“Amputee porn.” My colleague uttered this term while I was deeply immersed in one of my more pensive moments, during which I reminisced about the porn of my youth—long before the birth of the modern Internet—when Playboy barely showed more than a nipple, and Hustler was considered extreme. Back then, there was very little in the way of instant gratification; if your fetish involved seeing a pregnant midget get a pancake-batter enema or an amputee engaging in sexual gymnastics, you had to do a little leg work.
Thankfully, the continuous surfacing of new websites that promise to be even more fetish-specific than previous offerings has made it very easy to find a Bisquick-stuffed midget and other, similarly enjoyable niches. Once those niches begin to develop a wider audience and attract less scrutiny, will they still be classified as “fetish?” Because part of the appeal of fetishism is its inherent closeted nature, what’s risky to those who specialize in specific niches is that once a niche is “outed,” it begins to lose its appeal. It’s not unreasonable to believe that content producers who struggle to come up with or discover a fetish that is more decadent and avant-garde do so just to keep the dollars rolling in. In that effort, offering links to other, more hardcore sites is not necessarily forcing extreme content on surfers. And, while labeling content “extreme” does not make it beg for obscenity prosecution, extreme-content providers are treading some interesting waters to see which of them can supply something no other can—without being too bizarre.
I liken the constantly shifting definition of fetish material and its availability on the Web to the adage about the chicken and the egg: Did most atypical tastes come first, or are producers making more unconventional content and creating a market for it?
For reference, it’s important to get a general idea of what typically constitutes modern fetish niches. No longer primarily composed of saucy images of Betty Page in a cincher, adult fetishes today include everything from the tame (anal, interracial), the staples (BDSM, latex/apparel), and the “unique” (donkey punching, pregnancy), to the disgusting (unsanitary bodily fluids, Pauly Shore) and the unbelievable.
While many of the aforementioned concepts frequently find their way into mainstream adult projects, there are enough consumers out there who don’t wish to fast-forward through the vanilla stuff just to get to the part that gets their rocks off. For that customer base, a new breed of producers and talent has arisen to run content through the archetypical sieve, releasing a concentrated form of whatever it is consumers seek. This new breed changes faces and focuses as quickly as new fetish sites appear and garner mainstream acceptance. A cursory tour through any adult website reveals that a standard hardcore site eventually will supply enough linking relationships to take you to something only legal in certain parts of Holland.
Take, for example, the evolution of lesbian porn from taboo to obligatory. Before, sites like LezLove.com were enough to get loins stirring. Now, to keep the revenue flowing, lesbian-focused sites have had to narrow their focus beyond just “two girls together” and add ingredients like “strap-on dildos,” “feet,” “MILFs,” or “toasters,” while still keeping within the original all-girl fetish. Whether or not it’s intentional, surfers are being herded into more focused areas, and consequently, aficionados of one fetish inadvertently may find themselves newly devoted to a peripheral, more depraved fetish that incorporates their root desires and still makes them feel like their fetish is exclusive. Furthermore, that new enjoyment itself creates a demand for more material like it, thus making it less special, thereby generating the need for even more focused content, ad infinitum.
However, the fault doesn’t necessarily lie with adult industry luminaries like Rob Black, Max Hardcore, or the guys who own TheAmputee.com. All of them encounter reproach because some of their material is perceived to be outside the realm of decency, but they’re just filling a need. To be fair, if consumers didn’t like it, they wouldn’t look at it.
Perhaps the question of whether or not fetish producers sneakily are introducing unconventional material to maintain a competitive advantage can be answered only by taking a look at the dollars so-called “extreme” sites generate, rather than criticizing the inclusion of a link to a scat site on an innocent anal site.
In the meantime, don’t expect any fetish to remain closeted for too long—but BatterUpTheMidgetsButt.com is still available.
