First of all, phobias: We all throw the word around. “I have a salad phobia!” “That guy is a commitment-phobe!” But according to the NIMH, there are aversions — and then there are phobias. A fear is, like, “Man, I hate getting on elevators, I feel really sweaty and scared till I reach my floor.” A phobia is, “I will die if I ride an elevator!” Not just extreme fear, but irrational fear so extreme that it interferes with your work or life. And sex being what it is … you can bet there are people with irrational fears of all sorts of sex.
Sex is shrouded in mystery as it is. And so many people have weirdly traumatic early sexual experiences. I don’t just mean the really bad kind – I know a girl who walked in on her mom giving her dad oral sex, and due to a too-awkward conversation, she thought that was how babies were made till high school. There’s so much weird misinformation, and it can all too easily turn into fear and neurosis.
Anyway, it seems that the above article took most of their information from PhobiaList, which is the pet project of an amateur etymologist (word geek). He found all these words listed in reference books or medical papers, though very few of them showed up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Fear of an erect penis: Ithyphallophobia, Medorthophobia, and Phallophobia. (The last one makes sense, the first two are just too much of a mouthful.) (d’oh!)Fear of the opposite sex: SexophobiaFear of sexual love: ErotophobiaFear of having sex: Genophobia or CoitophobiaFear of nudity: GymnophobiaFear of women: Gynephobia or GynophobiaFear of men: HominophobiaFear of menstruation: MenophobiaFear of beautiful women: CaligynephobiaFear of wet dreams: OneirogmophobiaFear of female genitalia: Eurotophobia or KolpophobiaFear of virgins or young girls: ParthenophobiaFear of pregnancy or childbirth: Tocophobia (Do you know, I think I had this. I had to have hypnotherapy because I was so freaked out during my first pregnancy!)
This list leaves me cold, though. There’s no fear of boobs? No terror of condoms? No name for a hysterical aversion to oral sex? I feel empty.
I turned to Urban Dictionary to give me some less official, but funnier phobias. These, may I stress, are totally fake – but maybe they shouldn’t be!
Fear of oral sex after getting a horrible bj: Dome-o-phobiaFear of a short, fat penis: Chode phobiaSelf-explanatory: Other-person’s-penis phobiaFear of being single: AnuptaphobiaFear of giving or receiving oral sex: Osaphobia (oh! There it is!)Fear of rude vaginal noises: QueefaphobiaFear of seeing other people kiss: Liplock phobiaAnd my personal favorite…Fear that the cheese in your fried mozzarella stick is really spoo: Mozzacummaphobia
Do you know someone with a sex phobia? Do you have an aversion that could become a phobia? Tell us in the comments!
