NECROSEXUALITY
by Ken Gage ©1994Here's an unusual article; I wrote it for DARK REFLECTIONS magazine, along with several other "weird" pieces. This essay also appears in my book RED: Sex, Rants & Raves.
-- K.G.
There are amongst us men and women who have a sexual preference for the once (but no longer) living. They are a minority whose orgasmic stimulation is empowered by the dead, certainly, but their methods of sexuality are so strange, so deviant to the "norm," as to be equally and strangely compelling information.
Because of the criminality of their unique pleasure, exactly how many necrophiliacs dwell in this age would be difficult to enumerate. The largely anti-necrophilic world only gets an occasional glimpse of this practice in newspaper headlines, usually involving some funeral home scandal. Why necrosexuality is offensive to some, I don't understand -- call me liberated if you will. However, I do have some thoughts on dead sex that I shall share.
My interest in the subject is an informational one; I do not personally know any necrophiliacs and am not myself "afflicted" with this form of sexual preference. Having sex with the dead, though, is considered such a taboo subject that I can't help but be fascinated by the psychologies of those who have & enjoy necrophilia. Necrophilia is widely thought of as the most deviant sexual act of humankind (even though it is basically no more than the use of a corpse for masturbatory purposes), more so than S & M or bestiality, I think. Perhaps this top-ranking of the "deviance" exists because of the supposed sacredness of the dead which so many cultures embrace.
Throughout time, various peoples have treated their dead far better than they usually have treated their living, building great memorials, grave markers, mausoleums and even pyramids, with which to honor them. Some have even gone so far as to leave other fineries of life (such as food and jewelry) with their exalted & beloved unliving ones. Is this misplaced generosity generated by guilt and superstition? Or does this seemingly unproductive reverence have an actual value to the deceased? If people go to such steps to somehow benefit and/or honor the dead, how far removed are they from bestowing the ultimate act of love to these same dead? And why not? What's the difference?
The answers to these questions are more directed at your sense of values than depending on the scientific, although a sense of values removed from reality is largely the culprit behind the criminality of necrophilia. The common portrayal of the dead as horribly putrid and diseased bits of flesh scarcely clinging to the moldy bones of some maggot-ridden cadaver is no small deterrent to the fantasies of would-be necrophiliacs, perhaps.
Any social order naturally creates a social code (rules of behavior). In a democracy, this code is decided by the whims of the majority, not by any objective or necessarily rational means. Hence, we have laws against a behavior like necrophilia -- an unpopular act that is harmless to the order of things, of society or its individual members. Like seat-belt laws, the "reasoning" behind laws against necrophilia is probably something akin to protecting the individual from him- or herself; these laws are anti-autonomy, anti-choice. The truth is more likely, of course, that people are disgusted by such deeds and are sure that these things must be morally wrong, so they impose their feelings on the rest of society by making laws against acts of which they disapprove.
Both the imagined (or actual) holiness and insanitation (a strange coupling!) of the dead are probably the greatest obstacles to making corpses sexual attractive to most, but not to everyone. If you are a necrophiliac or well-know someone who is, I encourage you (or s/he) to write on this forbidden aspect of human sexuality, if for the mere sake of just informing the perversely curious.
When free thought and free will are made illegal, only criminals will have free thought and free will . . . and several hundred books on subjects like necrosexuality.
