3 Reasons Why Disgust Can Become a Sexual Turn-On

Source: Photo by OSPAN ALI on Unsplash

“I felt disgusted, but also very satisfied.”

I recently heard this line on an NPR podcast that had absolutely nothing to do with sex; however, it got me thinking. Over the years, I’ve heard many people say similar things about sex on surveys I've conducted. For example, some folks have reported fantasizing about or performing a sex act that triggered feelings of disgust while simultaneously turning them on.

To some, this might sound paradoxical. After all, disgust is an emotion that usually leads us to avoid something. So why does disgust sometimes produce the opposite effect in which we are attracted rather than repelled?

We’ve long known that there is a link between sexual arousal and disgust. Specifically, sexual arousal can reduce disgust, but disgust can also reduce sexual arousal.

For example, our disgust response tends to go down when we’re sexually aroused (see here and here). In other words, things that we might normally find to be gross become less so when we’re already turned on. This makes sense from the standpoint that sex itself can be kind of messy when we’re exchanging body fluids, so maybe it’s adaptive for us to be less triggered by disgust when we’re having sex.

But at the same time, if you’re already grossed out about something, it can be harder to get in the mood for sex. Evolutionary psychologists think this is about pathogen avoidance: specifically, if a disgust response is triggered, it should lead us to avoid sex in the interest of protecting our health and fertility (e.g., avoiding potential STDs).

While fascinating, neither of these lines of research really tell us why disgust itself sometimes produces the opposing effect of being a turn-on, or something that facilitates arousal. So what’s up with that? There are at least three possible explanations.

Option 1: It might be a learned behavior

As I mentioned above, we know that disgust tends to go down to some degree when we’re aroused—but after orgasm, that disgust response can come back pretty quickly. This is a big part of the reason why people are often quick to turn off porn after they’ve orgasmed: they start to feel grossed out by what they’re watching.

So maybe it’s the case that if your disgust response comes back really quickly while you’re still experiencing the pleasure of orgasm that some people start to learn an association between disgust and sexual pleasure.

You can think of this as a conditioning effect: feeling disgusted itself can potentially become rewarding if it’s repeatedly paired with something pleasurable and positive.

Option 2: It might be about the appeal of the taboo

Another possible explanation is that disgusting things are also often taboo. We’ve all been told not to do gross things at one time or another. But when you tell people not to do something, that sometimes makes them want to do it even more.

This is a fundamental principle of human sexuality known as the Erotic Equation: attraction + obstacles = excitement. So if you have even a slight inkling to do something disgusting, being told not to do it can increase your interest in it.

As I’ve found in my own research, taboos are one of the most popular themes in our sexual fantasies. So this might not be so much about the fact that something is disgusting; rather it might be more about the fact that it’s taboo.

Sexual taboos might also be especially appealing to people high in sensation seeking tendencies, who need more potent stimuli in order to get aroused in the first place. For them, doing something taboo amps up the excitement factor.

Option 3: It might be about attraction to power play

Yet another possibility is that doing something disgusting—or being made to do something disgusting by a partner—can be a form of submission, masochism, and/or humiliation.

Think of it this way: there can be a certain pain that accompanies doing something disgusting. But if you’re turned on by pain, then doing something disgusting can potentially become sexually arousing in and of itself.

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Through this lens, disgusting sexual acts might sometimes be a vehicle for enacting fantasies or desires about BDSM or power play.

Takeaways

While these three explanations can help us to understand why disgust sometimes becomes a kink, they may not be the only possibilities. It’s likely that multiple explanations exist.

Adding further complexity to this is that disgust, in general, is a little different for everyone. For some, disgust is easily triggered across situations (they have what we call high trait-level disgust); for others, their threshold for disgust is set much higher and it takes a lot more for them to feel disgusted.

As I often like to say, human sexuality is complex! And, as is true for any kink, disgust may become sexually arousing to different people for different reasons.