There’s a long, wet, writhing history of people seeing the eroticism of tentacles. But I’m not here to talk about the history of sexualizing the powerful, undulating limbs of beasts both oceanic and fictional. I’m here to talk about me doing it.
(Content notes: Brief references to assault, queerphobia, dysphoria; eroticized discussion of monster fucking; eroticized allusions to potentially dubious/non-consensual acts.)
why are tentacles so fucking hot?
My interest in tentacles spawned from a desire to consume penetration-centric porn that didn’t feature penises. (I was a rape survivor still navigating my feelings around dick, and an egg not yet acknowledging and processing my own gender dysphoria. I have a much healthier relationship with bodies now.) Tentacle monster comics were an easily accessible alternative in the days of image boards and dial up.
Tentacle porn embodies so much of what I love about power exchange and penetrative sex. Tentacles are usually relentless, greedy, and overwhelming. They plunder and they fuck and they stretch their receiver with unsatisfiable lust and/or curiosity. Like fisting as kink, the themes and visuals in tentacle eroticism emphasize pushing someone’s orifice(s) to their limits, the strange relief of accepting one’s unrelentingly pleasurable plight, the beautifully grotesque intimacy of occupying someone else’s body by physical force.
There is also the monster element. Monsters and queerness are inextricably linked; media censorship and public sentiment drove queers into monstrous roles in movies and novels for much of history. (And those tropes – both overt and subtle – are still popular.) My own interest in tentacle porn came from the queerness, the otherness of my sexual desires. In monster smut I found – and still find – a manifestation of the weirdness of my carnality, dressed up in fur and fangs and the cold embrace of space.
Tentacles are otherworldly. They can perform sex acts impossible for a human being. They feel lust – or at least hunger or curiosity – that’s alien. That’s deeply appealing to me, as someone who’s queer, nonbinary, and kinky. My sexual identity has only recently begun being culturally normalized; “otherworldly” and “alien” are categories I’ve found comforting.
tentacles as sex toys
It’s no secret that I love sex toys. (You’re currently on my website, which is dedicated to talking about and reviewing them.) One of the many reasons I’m enthusiastic about sex toys is that they can make fantasy physical and fuckable for the playful and devious among us, from pet tails for role players to electro wands for medical kinksters.
Tentacles are popular fixtures in fantasy dildo collections, but you don’t see many in mainstream sex shops. They’re almost all produced by indie makers that sell through Etsy or their own websites. This means they’re justifiably expensive, and often only available in “drops”: sudden or scheduled releases of random toys in various colors and firmness levels.
One such indie maker is Uberrime Handmade Dildos, my pal and one of my site sponsors. Uberrime doesn’t do drops – they have a consistent inventory that’s always available to order, and their toys have set densities and coloration options. Some of their most popular stock is carried by sex shops like SheVibe, Peepshow Toys, and even my local brick and mortar.
tentacle dildos by uberrime
I only own one Uberrime tentacle: the distinctly alien Xenuphora. (EDIT: I now own the Cephalatrox, Teuthida, and Kraken Revenge!) It’s petite by tentacle standards, just 1.43 inches wide and less than 7 inches tall. It comes in several colorations on Uberrime’s site, but mine is a solid glow-in-the-dark green. I often joke about how I literally use it as a night light because it’s so bright.
The Xenuphora – along with its companion, the more prominently ribbed Xenusoid – has a backstory, which I’ve always loved from fantasy makers. (Not everyone enjoys these. But if an artist’s canon for their fuckable creation doesn’t suit your fantasies, it’s easily ignored.) The Xenuphora and Xenusoid are both water-dwellers from another world, clinging to rocks and passively netting prey in their suckers for slow digestion. As someone who’s always been obsessed with tide pools, I find this imagery intriguingly animalistic.
Appealing to more traditional tentacle enthusiasts, Uberrime also has the Teuthida and Cephalatrox: two large, squishy, sucker-lined silicone limbs. The Teuthida has 8 insertable inches, and its undulated shaft maxes out at just over 2 inches in diameter. The substantial Cephalatrox (a name I enjoy immensely) is over 12 inches tall, making it larger than even Uberrime’s Grandis Giant. The base of its penetrating length swells to over 2.5 inches wide.
The Teuthida and Cephalatrox have flared bases, making them not just anal safe, but possible to use in certain harnesses. Bodily wielding a tentacle (or two, if you’ve got double o-rings) as if it’s slithered free of your own form is the kind of body horror or queer monster sex play that the spooky season demands.
There is also, of course, the Tentare (renamed Dragon Claw and Talon on SheVibe) and the Deep Diver. The former is a silicone sleeve for bullet vibrators, and I enthusiastically reviewed it in 2018. Like the rest of Uberrime’s tentacles, it provides toe-curlingly interesting alien textures you can rub off on. Stubbier than what most would think of when arousedly pondering tentacles, the Tentare is a different beast. A seducer rather than a plunderer.
The Deep Diver is an upgraded, hand-sculpted recreation of a SheVibe-stocked design from Whipspider, a studio that abruptly vanished 7 years ago. Its curving heft (2.5” at its widest) and glow-in-the-dark suckers give it a spacey, would-look-good-next-to-a-lava-lamp (groovy!) aesthetic instead of something purely aquatic or alien.
the timeliness of tentacles
I’ve found myself thinking a lot about tentacles recently. 2020’s unending shitfuckery – both on a global and personal scale – has frequently driven my erotic musings towards the fictional and abstract, where it’s safer. Queer monsters, autistic aliens, the terrifying sensuality of limits approached and forcibly surpassed…
Is it so odd for tentacles to feel nostalgic to me? For their weird, winding shapes to feel more familiar to me than my own body? To draw comfort from their otherness, their separation from fact and the dreadful present. I don’t think so. I think I’m lucky to have found a queer refuge in them, a way to manifest baser urges in both fantasy and silicone.
And I’m quite keen to keep doing it.
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