It's coming to GET YOU! Sex phobias — some of the words just seem downright weird and randomly made up in this article. And why are there three different words for "fear of an erect penis?" I decided to do a little legwork of my own.
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: Sexophobia
Fear of sexual love: Erotophobia
Fear of having sex: Genophobia or Coitophobia
Fear of nudity: Gymnophobia
Fear of women: Gynephobia or Gynophobia
Fear of men: Hominophobia
Fear of menstruation: Menophobia
Fear of beautiful women: Caligynephobia
Fear of wet dreams: Oneirogmophobia
Fear of female genitalia: Eurotophobia or Kolpophobia
Fear of virgins or young girls: Parthenophobia
Fear 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-phobia
Fear of a short, fat penis: Chode phobia
Self-explanatory: Other-person's-penis phobia
Fear of being single: Anuptaphobia
Fear of giving or receiving oral sex: Osaphobia (oh! There it is!)
Fear of rude vaginal noises: Queefaphobia
Fear of seeing other people kiss: Liplock phobia
And 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!
