Lolicon (Lolita Complex)

Lolicon (ロリコン) 

also romanised as lolikon or rorikon, is Japanese discourse or media focusing on the attraction to young or prepubescent girls. The term lolicon is a portmanteau of the phrase "Lolita complex"; it describes an attraction to young or prepubescent girls, an individual with such an attraction, or lolicon manga or lolicon anime, a genre of manga and anime wherein childlike female characters are often depicted in an "erotic-cute" manner (also known as ero kawaii), in an art style reminiscent of the shōjo manga (girls' comics) style.
Outside Japan, lolicon is in less common usage and usually refers to the genre. The term is a reference to Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita, in which a middle-aged man becomes sexually obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl. It was first used in Japan in the 1970s and quickly became used to describe erotic dojinshi (amateur comics) portrayals of young girls..
Laws have been enacted in various countries, including in Japan, which regulate explicit content featuring children or childlike characters. Parent and citizens groups in Japan have organized to work toward stronger controls and stricter laws governing lolicon manga and other similar media. Studies of lolicon fans state that they are attracted to an aesthetic of cuteness rather than the age of the characters, and that collecting lolicon represents a disconnect from society.

Definition and scope

Generally, manga and anime featuring lolicon include sexual attraction to younger girls or to girls with youthful characteristics. Individuals in each group respond sexually to visual images of children and young people in distinct and narrow age ranges.Manga and anime featuring lolicon contain images and narratives involving romantic and erotic interactions between typically an adult man and a girl in the age range desired by such men.
Strictly speaking, Lolita complex in Japanese refers to the paraphilia itself, but the abbreviation lolicon can also refer to an individual who has the paraphilia. Lolicon is widespread in Japan, where it is a frequent subject of scholarly articles and criticism. Many general bookstores and newsstands openly offer illustrated lolicon material, but there has also been police action against lolicon manga.
The kawaii (cute) and ero kawaii (erotic-cute) style is extremely popular in Japan, where it is present in many of the manga/anime styles. The school-age girl in a school uniform is also an erotic symbol in Japan. Burusera shops cater to men with lolicon complexes by selling unwashed panties, men can make dates with teenagers through terekura (telephone clubs), and some schoolgirls moonlight as prostitutes. Sharon Kinsella observed an increase in unsubstantiated accounts of schoolgirl prostitution in the media in the late 1990s, and speculated that these unproven reports developed in counterpoint to the increased reporting on comfort women. She speculated that, "It may be that the image of happy girls selling themselves voluntarily cancels out the other guilty image"

Genre characteristics and meaning outside Japan

Lolicon manga are usually short stories, published as dōjinshi (fan works) or in magazines specializing in the genre such as Lemon People, Manga Burikko and Comic LO (where "LO" is an abbreviation for "Lolita Only"). Common focuses of these stories include taboo relationships, such as between a teacher and student or brother and sister, while others feature sexual experimentation between children. Some lolicon manga cross over with other erotic genres, such as crossdressing and futanari. Plot devices are often used to explain the young appearance for many of the characters. Schoolgirls accidentally showing their underwear are common characters in the lolicon genre.
Akira Akagi believes that during the 1980s, the lolicon genre changed from being tales of a young girl having sex with an older man to being about "girl-ness" and "cuteness". Akagi identifies subgenres within lolicon of sadomasochism, "groping objects" (tentacles and robots in the role of the penis), "mecha fetishes" (a combination of a machine, usually a weapon, and a girl), parodies of mainstream anime and manga, and "simply indecent or perverted stuff". Additionally, lolicon can include themes of lesbianism and masturbation.
 Men began reading shōjo manga in the 1970s, including the works of the Year 24 Group and the "girly" works of Mutsu A-ko. According to Dinah Zank, lolicon is "rooted in the glorification of girls culture in Japan", and therefore uses shōjo manga vocabulary. The lolicon style borrows from shōjo manga designs and has also been influenced by women creating pornographic materials for men. According to Michael Darling, female manga artists who draw lolicon material include Chiho Aoshima (The red-eyed tribe billboard), Aya Takano (Universe Dream wall painting)., and Kaworu Watashiya (who created Kodomo no Jikan; was interpreted as a lolicon work by Jason DeAngelis.) According to Darling, male artists include Henmaru Machino (untitled, aka Green Caterpillar's Girl), Hitoshi Tomizawa (Alien 9, Milk Closet), and Bome (sculptures). Weekly Dearest My Brother is a manga and figurine series which, according to Takashi Murakami, women find cute and "an innocent fantasy", but which arouses "pedophiliac desires" among men.
The meaning of lolicon has evolved much in the Western world, as have words like anime, otaku and hentai "Lolicon" is also used to refer directly to the products, anime or manga that contains explicitly sexual or erotic portrayals of prepubescent girls. However, there is disagreement if this definition also applies to childlike characters who are not clearly prepubescent and if it applies to material lacking explicit sexual content.

History

(Origin)

The phrase is a reference to Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita, in which a middle-age man becomes sexually obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl. The term "Lolita complex" was first used in the early 1970s with the translation of Russell Trainer's The Lolita Complex and may have entered Japanese nomenclature at that time. Shinji Wada used the word in his Stumbling upon a Cabbage Field (キャベツ畑でつまずいて Kyabetsu-batake de Tsumazuite), an Alice in Wonderland manga parody in 1974. The shortening of the term to "lolicon" came later. Early lolicon idols were Clarisse from Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro (1979) and the shōjo heroine Minky Momo (1982) as female characters in shōnen series at that point were largely mothers or older-sister characters. Although Clarisse was depicted as 16, older than most "lolicon" images today, she inspired "fairytale-esque" or "girly" fanworks. Galbraith asserts that Minky Momo was an attempt to court lolicon fans. This is denied by Satō Toshihiko, who planned the original Minky Momo. Helen McCarthy suggests that the roots of 'lolikon' anime lie in the magical girl genre, where the lines between young girls and adult women become blurred

1980s - 2000s

The lolicon manga genre began in the 1980s with Hideo Azuma's works, such as The Machine Which Came from the Sea (海から来た機械 Umi kara Kita Kikai). In 1979, Azuma had previously published the first "blatantly lolicon" manga in his own self-published dōjinishi magazine Cybele. Azuma's works became popular among schoolboy readers because most of the pornographic manga up until then had featured mature women influenced by gekiga. Other dōjinshi magazines began featuring "underage or barely pubescent virgins" in erotic contexts and by the late 1980s this "fantasy genre" had spread to some mass market magazines. Frederik L. Schodt and Dinah Zank both suggest that Japanese laws prohibiting the depiction of pubic hair may have encouraged the spread of "erotic manga with a rorikon flavor". Throughout the 1980s, notable lolicon manga artists who published in these magazines include Miki Hayasaka, Kamui Fujiwara, Kyoko Okazaki, Narumi Kakinouchi, and Yoshiki Takaya peaking in the mid-1980s.
Frederik L. Schodt has suggested that one reason lolicon manga is popular with some fans is because the female characters portrayed are "younger, slightly softer, [and] rarely possessing an in-your-face aggressive feminism" which is often found in female characters in American comics.
Public attention was brought to bear on lolicon when Tsutomu Miyazaki kidnapped and murdered four girls between the ages of 4 and 7 in 1988 and 1989, committing acts of necrophilia with their corpses. He was found to be a "withdrawn and obsessive" otaku and in particular he enjoyed lolicon. The Tokyo High Court ruled Miyazaki sane, stating that "the murders were premeditated and stemmed from Miyazaki's sexual fantasies" and he was executed by hanging for his crimes on June 17, 2008.
The case caused a moral panic about "harmful manga", and "sparked a crackdown by local authorities on retailers and publishers, including the larger companies, and the arrests of dojinshi creators". In the aftermath, the Japanese non-profit organization CASPAR was founded with the goal of campaigning for regulation of lolicon.
Public sentiment against sexual cartoon depictions of minors was revived in 2005 when a convicted sex offender, who was arrested for the murder of a seven-year-old girl in Nara, was suspected as a lolicon. Despite media speculation, it was found that the murderer, Kaoru Kobayashi, seldom had interest in manga, games, or dolls. He claimed, however, that he had become interested in small girls after watching an animated pornographic video as a high school student^. He was sentenced to death by hanging.

2010s–present

In February 2010, a proposal to amend the Tokyo law on what material could be sold to minors included a ban on sexualised depictions of "nonexistent youths" under the age of 18+. This proposal was criticised by many manga artists, and opposed by the Democratic Party of Japan. The bill was put on hold until June of that year, where after some amendments, including changing the text for "nonexistent youths" to "depicted youths". However, in spite of the changes, the bill was rejected by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly in June.
A revised edition was presented in November that year to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, which would require self-regulation of "'manga, anime and other images'...that 'unjustifiably glorify or emphasize' certain sexual or pseudo sexual acts...depictions of 'sexual or pseudo sexual acts that would be illegal in real life'". However, the bill no longer uses the term "nonexistent youth" and applies to all characters and to material that is not necessarily meant to be sexually stimulating. It was approved in December and took full effect in July 2011; however, the bill does not regulate mobile sites or downloaded content and is only intended for publications such as books and DVDs. On April 14, 2011, the title Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei ("My Wife Is an Elementary Student") was listed as a title to be considered for restriction due to "child rape". It was later published online by J-Comi. On August 25, 2011, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party submitted a petition requesting stricter laws on child pornography, which included animated child pornography, however no action took place as a result of the petition. On May 27, 2013, a revised child pornography law was introduced by the Liberal Democratic Party, the New Komei Party and the Japan Restoration Party that would make possession of sexual images of individuals under 18 illegal with a fine of 1 million yen (about US$10,437) and less than a year in jail. The Japanese Democratic Party, along with several industry associations involved in anime and manga, had protested against the bill saying "while they appreciate that the bill protects children, it will also restrict freedom of expression". Manga creator and artist Ken Akamatsu has gone on to say that "There is also no scientific evidence to prove that so-called 'harmful media' increases crime". The bill was not rejected and remained in a stalemate situation until June 2014, when it went forward with the removal of lolicon anime/manga from the bill. The law was put into full effect the following year banning real life child pornography.

Controversy

See also: Legal status of cartoon pornography depicting minors

The legal status of lolicon manga and anime that portray children involved erotically with adults has changed with time and is currently under intensive debate in Japan. A Japanese non-profit organization called CASPAR has claimed that lolicon and other anime magazines and games encourage sex crimes.According to Galbraith, Yasushi Takatsuki has noted that sexual abuse of minors in Japan has declined since the 1960s and 1970s, which "roughly coincides with the increasing presence of fictional lolicon". Galbraith feels that this is not an argument that lolicon "compensates for or relieves real desires", but instead that lolicon imagery does not "reflect the desires" of readers, or inspire them to commit crimes. It has been suggested that restricting sexual expression in drawings or animated games and videos might actually increase the rate of sexual crime by eliminating a harmless outlet for desires that could motivate crime.
Cultural critic Hiroki Azuma said that very few readers of lolicon manga commit crimes. He states that in the otaku culture, lolicon is the "most convenient [form of rebellion]" against society. Azuma says that some otaku feel so "excluded from society" that they "feel as if they are the sort of 'no good' person who should be attracted to little girls". Sarah Goode describes the accumulation of lolicon materials as being "a medium through which disaffected men may choose to express their sense of anomie and disconnection with society". When questioning the relationship of lolicon to "finding children in real life sexually attractive", Goode presents the argument of a lolicon fan "that even if I could be classified as a kind of anime lolicon, it'd NEVER translate into RL pedophilia. This is predicated on the belief that the anime lolis I like DO NOT EXIST in RL".
Setsu Shigematsu believes that lolicon manga should not be equated to photographic or adult video lolicon materials which involve real children; instead she argues that lolicon represents an artificial sexuality, turning away from "three dimensional reality" and redirecting sexual energies towards "two dimensional figures of desire"^. Akira Akagi writes that in lolicon manga, the girl represents cuteness, and that it is not her age which makes her attractive, and furthermore, that lolicon fans project themselves onto lolicon characters, identifying themselves with the girl.
Lolicon manga has been and is marketed to both boys and men. Sharon Kinsella wrote that lolicon manga was a late 1980s outgrowth of girls' manga, which included yaoi and parodies of boys' and adult manga. This occurred as more men attended amateur manga conventions and as new boys' amateur manga genres appeared at Comiket. Kinsella distinguished between the attitudes toward gender of amateur lolicon manga and that of male fans of girls' manga. While parody manga created by women ridicule male stereotypes and appeal to both male and female fans, lolicon manga "usually features a girl heroine with large eyes and a body that is both voluptuous and child-like, scantily clad in an outfit that approximates a cross between a 1970s bikini and a space-age suit of armour" Kinsella noted dominant British and American genres and imports of animation video in the 1990s derived from lolicon manga, suggesting women, and therefore also men, in all of these countries have gone through similar social and cultural experiences.
Ito characterises otaku as having more affection towards the anime and manga world than for a realistic world, saying that to the otaku, the two-dimensional world portrayed becomes "more real". Ito views the preference for young girls as sex objects in manga and anime to be due to a change in Japanese society in the 1970s and 1980s. Ito says that at that time, boys felt that girls were "surpassing them in terms of willpower and action". However, as the boys believed girls to be the weaker sex, the boys began focusing on young girls "who were 'easy to control'". Additionally, the young girls of lolicon exist in the media, which Ito points out is a place where one can control things however they want.
Responding to the portrayal of Clarisse from Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, Hayao Miyazaki criticized the lolicon artists and fans who idolize her in what he considers a demeaning manner. He differentiates his female protagonists, labeling those the aforementioned idolized, according to The Otaku Encyclopedia, "as pets". Later, he would go on to say,

"It's difficult. [My female protagonists] immediately become the subjects of rorikon gokko (play toy for Lolita Complex males). In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict [such protagonists] as if they just want [such girls] as pets, and things are escalating more and more."

— Hayao Miyazaki, 1988 interview with Animage

He expressed concern as to what this might mean for "human rights for women".

Danny Phantom

Danny Phantom is an American animated television series created by Butch Hartman for Nickelodeon. It was produced by Billionfold Studios and distributed by Nelvana, a Canadian animation company, and Paramount Television. The series follows a teenage boy who, after an accident with an unpredictable portal between the human world and the supernatural "Ghost Zone", becomes half-ghost and takes on the task of saving his town from subsequent ghost attacks using a variety of ghost-themed superpowers, while attempting to keep his ghost half a secret from everyone, except for his best friends and, later, his sister, then the world.
The series premiered on April 3, 2004 and ended on August 24, 2007, totaling 53 episodes and three seasons. The first two seasons consists of 20 episodes, whereas the short third season consists of 13 episodes. Danny Phantom has received critical acclaim, with primary praises for its ensemble cast and classic comic book feel and style. The series has spawned its own sets of video game, home video, and music soundtrack releases, as well as toys and various other merchandise.

Premise

Main article: List of Danny Phantom episodes

Danny Phantom centers on the life and adventures of Danny Fenton, an unpopular but good-natured 14-year-old boy attending Casper High School in the small town of Amity Park, implied to be in Ohio. He lives with his eccentric ghost-hunting parents, Maddie and Jack, and his smart yet overbearing 16-year-old sister, Jazz (short for Jasmine). Upon pressure from Sam Manson, one of his best friends, he decides to explore the Ghost Portal that his parents had created in a failed attempt to bridge the real world and the Ghost Zone (the parallel universe in which ghosts reside). Once inside, Danny accidentally presses the "On" button (which his naïve parents failed to do), activating the Portal, which infuses his DNA with ectoplasm, transforming him into a half-ghost.
Danny, who calls himself "Danny Phantom" in ghost form, quickly develops the ability to fly, become invisible, become intangible, and the "overshadow" ability (which allows him to possess and control people) after first learning how to switch back and forth between his ghost and human forms. Over time he develops much stronger abilities; such as his Ghost Ray (a concentrated blast of kinetic energy he fires from is hand), his Ghostly Wail (an intensely powerful scream that knocks back anything caught in its path), telekinesis and even cryokinesis. Danny is initially frightened by his new abilities and has little control over them, but he soon learns to use them to protect his town from malevolent ghosts. After the defeat of a Lunch Lady Ghost in the first episode, Danny turns to the life of a superhero, using his powers to rid his hometown from the various ghosts that plague it, who are almost always brought into the world thanks to the sporadic random activation of the Fenton's Ghost Portal. Danny's two best friends, fun-loving technophile Tucker Foley and wealthy, goth-minded Samantha "Sam" Manson, support Danny and help him with his ghost-fighting.
Danny's ghost form is a polarization of what he looked like when he entered the Ghost Portal. When he goes ghost, his black hair turns white, his blue eyes turn green and the white jumpsuit he was wearing during the accident is now in negative color, with the white areas of the suit becoming black and vice versa, and the black boots he was wearing fused into the suit and turned white. If Sam had not removed the Jack Fenton logo on Danny's jumpsuit before the accident, it would have been a permanent part of Danny's ghost form. In the second season, a ghost grants Sam's inadvertent wish that she and Danny had never met, and, in consequence, Danny loses his ghost powers, as Sam had been the one who had persuaded Danny to investigate the Portal in the first place, which then led to the accident. In the end Sam persuades Danny (now fully human) to regain his powers by reenacting the accident, this time wearing the jumpsuit with her newly designed "DP" logo on the chest, so that it appears when he goes ghost from then on.
Danny faces threats of many kinds, including vengeful ghost hunter Valerie Gray, who, for a short period of time, becomes his love interest^, an enemy half-ghost Vlad Masters/Plasmius, an old friend of his father's and considered to be Danny's true arch-rival, and even his own parents who, being ghost hunters, view Danny Phantom (and any other ghosts) as a menace to society. In addition, Danny tries to keep his secret safe from his classmates, teachers, and family. Throughout it all, Danny slowly realizes his own potential and his purpose, while both worlds slowly begin to accept him as their defender.

Characters

• Daniel "Danny" Fenton/"Danny Phantom" (voiced by David Kaufman) is the series' titular protagonist. Danny and his friends are the "unpopular" kids, having "jock" bullies and quaint teachers. A freshman in high school along with his friends, Danny is a clumsy 14-year-old boy who gained ghost powers from a lab accident when he stepped into his parents' ghost portal. He later chooses to use these powers to fight against malevolent ghosts, which have begun to regularly escape the mysterious Ghost Zone and plague his hometown of Amity Park. An ongoing arc is his constant struggle to use his powers for the benefit of others rather than abuse it for his own selfishness. Danny can be benevolent and decisive. Since he is half-ghost, Danny's struggles, hardships faced by teenagers in his world, are unusually topped with deadly villains from the ghost zone; but in the end, with the help of his friends, he determinedly acts on the right decision. His love interests include Valerie Gray, Paulina, and Samantha Manson.
• Samantha "Sam" Manson (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is Danny's female best friend, and eventually girlfriend at the end of the series, who is also responsible for the accident that gave Danny his powers. Though wealthy, she chooses to hide her family's monetary success (for quite some time) in favor of being liked for who she is. A strident individualist, Sam is a practitioner of an overly dramatized fictional form of vegetarianism called "Ultra Recyclo-Vegetarianism^" (often generalized as "not eating anything that had a face"), a frequent protester for such things as animal rights, and a self-proclaimed goth. In the beginning, she was only Danny's close best friend. But, over time, her feelings for Danny began getting stronger; eventually, she fell in love with him and couldn't bring herself to tell him out of fear of ruining their friendship. Her patience paid off, as Danny had secretly fallen in love with her as well, and they eventually shared their true feelings with each other and became a couple.
• Tucker Foley (voiced by Rickey D'Shon Collins) is a lighthearted teenager who is obsessed with technology, getting a girlfriend, and meat. He has been Danny's best friend "since forever". When not obsessing over gadgets, he obsesses over girls. Like Sam, he shares in Danny's secret and often helps battle ghosts back into the Ghost Zone. He generally provides comic relief. Tucker's inventions sometimes seem redundant, but ironically, they will work well in the Ghost Zone, or against ghosts. Tucker and Sam frequently handle the pros and cons of aiding Danny, especially when he's "going ghost."
• Jasmine "Jazz" Fenton (voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey) is Danny's somewhat overprotective and perhaps overly helpful older sister; a smart and highly sociable overachiever who also thinks of herself as an adult. Jazz considers her parents' obsession with ghosts a sign of needing psychological help. She eventually learns about Danny's powers, but chooses not to reveal her knowledge until he is ready to talk about them with her.
• Jack Fenton (voiced by Rob Paulsen) is Danny and Jazz's father and Maddie's husband. Jack expresses an obsession with destroying ghosts, blindly going by the belief that all ghosts are evil and must be destroyed, including Danny Phantom. He is generally incompetent in nature, but can be an effective fighter when provoked. Jack cares about his family but does not know about Danny's powers. He is almost never seen without his orange jumpsuit.
• Maddie Fenton (voiced by Kath Soucie) is Danny and Jazz's mother, and Jack's wife. She is a gifted genius and dedicated hunter of ghosts, though she usually aims to dissect and study them rather than destroy them. She is an excellent, competent fighter, from whom Danny probably inherited his own talent for combat. Like her husband, she is almost never seen without her blue jumpsuit.

NETORARE (NTR)

NETORARE (CUCKOLD)

literally means "cuckold" and shortened as NTR is a hentai genre where in a heroine will be introduced as having a significant other, which may be a husband, a boyfriend, or even a partner in a BST affair. The story will then show the aforementioned heroine being intimate with another man thus provoking jealousy in the audience by proxy.

History of the term

The word "cuckold" derives from the cuckoo bird, alluding to its habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests. The association is common in medieval folklore, literature, and iconography.
English usage first appears about 1250 in the satirical and polemical poem "The Owl and the Nightingale" (l. 1544). The term was clearly regarded as embarrassingly direct, as evident in John Lydgate's "Fall of Princes" (c. 1440). In the late 14th century, the term also appeared in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale". Shakespeare's poetry often referred to cuckolds, with several of his characters suspecting they had become one.
The female equivalent "cuckquean" first appears in English literature in 1562, adding a female suffix to the "cuck". One often overlooked subtlety of the word is that it implies that the husband is "deceived", that he is unaware of his wife's unfaithfulness and may not know until the arrival or growth of a child plainly not his (as with cuckoo birds).
A related word, first appearing in 1520, is "wittol", which substitutes "wit" (in the sense of "knowing") for the first part of the word, referring to a man aware of and reconciled to his wife's infidelity.

Metaphor and symbolism

In Western traditions, cuckolds have sometimes been described as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns." This is an allusion to the mating habits of stags, who forfeit their mates when they are defeated by another male. In Italy (especially in Southern Italy, where it is a major personal offence), the insult is often accompanied by the sign of the horns. In French, the term is porter des cornes, which is used by Molière to describe someone whose consort has been unfaithful. In German, the term is "jemandem Hörner aufsetzen", or "Hörner tragen", the husband is "der gehörnte Ehemann". Rabelais wrote the Tiers Livers of Gargantua and Pantagruel in 1546, by which time the symbol of the horns was "so well-known and over-used that the author could barely avoid making reference to it." Molière's L'École des femmes (1662) is the story of a man who mocks cuckolds and becomes one at the end. In Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1372–77), the "The Miller's Tale" is a story that humorously examines the life of a cuckold. In Chinese usage, an altogether different allusion is used, when the cuckold (or wittol) is said to be "戴綠帽子" (wearing the green hat), which derives from the sumptuary laws used in China from the 13th to the 18th centuries which required the males in households with prostitutes to wrap their heads in a green scarf (or later a hat).

Cuckoldry as a fetish

Unlike the traditional definition of the term, in fetish usage a cuckold is complicit in his (or her) partner's sexual "infidelity"; the wife who enjoys cuckolding her husband is frequently called a hotwife or a cuckoldress if the man is more submissive.

Theories in psychology

Psychology regards cuckold fetishism as a variant of masochism, the cuckold deriving pleasure from being humiliated. In Freudian analysis, cuckold fetishism is the eroticization of the fears of infidelity and of failure in the man's competition for procreation and the affection of females. In his book Masochism and the Self, psychologist Roy Baumeister advanced a Self Theory analysis that cuckolding (other forms of sexual masochism) among otherwise mentally healthy people was a form of escapism. According to this theory, cuckold fetishists are relieving themselves of the stress of the burden of their social role and escaping into a simpler, less-expansive position.
If a couple can keep the fantasy in the bedroom, or come to an agreement where being cuckolded in reality does not damage the relationship, they may try it out in reality. However, the primary proponent of the fantasy is almost always the one being humiliated, or the "cuckold": the cuckold convinces his lover to participate in the fantasy for them, though other "cuckolds" may prefer their lover to initiate the situation instead. The fetish fantasy does not work at all if the cuckold is being humiliated against their will.

Theories in evolutionary biology and psychology

In evolutionary biology, the term cuckold is also applied to males who are unwittingly investing parental effort in offspring that are not genetically their own. As noted above, the term cuckold is derivative of the mis-directed parental investment of birds who direct parental investment to the eggs that cuckoo birds have laid in their nests.
In his book Sperm Wars, biologist Robin Baker speculated that the excitement and stimulation of the cuckolding fetish emerges from the biology of sexuality and the effects of sexual arousal on the brain, although it is important to note the word "cuckold" does not appear in his book. According to one of his theories, Baker believes that when a man thinks that his female mate may have been sexual with another man, the man is prompted by biological urges to copulate with the female in an effort to "compete" with the other man's sperm. Baker is also one of the few proponents of the theory of Killer Sperm, the idea that sperm compete not only for first access to the egg but by "attacking" other sperm. Although this idea appears frequently in cuckold fetish material, very few biologists share this view.
Baker and his proponents' views conflict with the hypothesized foundations for sexual jealousy in evolutionary psychology, which is rooted in the idea that men, specifically, will react jealously to sexual infidelity on the parts of their mates. Infidelity is also the number one cause for divorce.
The cuckold’s urge to thrust, through intercourse or masturbation, is often enhanced by the presence of the bull, whether real or fantasized. A study by Gordon Gallup and coworkers (2003) concluded that one evolutionary purpose of the thrusting motion characteristic of intense intercourse is for the penis to “upsuck” another man’s semen before depositing its own.