A curious reader wrote to me saying she’d read something about blood fetishism and wanted to know more about it, and well, the truth is that it piqued my curiosity too, because even though I’m not the biggest fan of Twilight or vampire stories in general, I have to admit that I find the vampire atmosphere very sexy.
The passion for blood, known as hematophilia, is defined as an obsession with seeing, licking, and sucking blood. It’s a practice that involves light biting that causes wounds and produces mutual pleasure.
This fetish has gone largely unnoticed, but it’s closely related to BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, and Domination, Submission and Sadism) due to the physical elements involved (wounds, blood), and because it straddles the line between the desirable and the forbidden, which is seductive in its own way.
Since the Victorian era, writers have captured these experiences and fantasies, embellishing them with their verses.
And the truth is that, although this fetish isn’t widely documented, it dates back to the most sensual period in European history: the 17th century, when curiosity and the desire to experiment knew no bounds. Here are some events that confirm this:
Between 1602 and 1604, it was rumored that Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman, had tortured and murdered an unknown number of young women over the course of more than a decade. According to witnesses, she lured unsuspecting peasant women with promises of work, or the daughters of minor nobility by offering to teach them etiquette at her castle, where the story tells that around 650 of them disappeared.
Additionally, those in the know say that the noblewoman killed those women and drank their blood, and even bathed in it to stay young and beautiful. That is why, thanks to her vampiric hobby, she was called the Blood Countess.
In the poem “Lenore,” written in 1773 by the German Gottfried August Bürger, a lady is portrayed as waiting for her fiancé for a most unconventional date: to go to the cemetery and revel among corpses.
The book “Varney The Vampire”, also known as “The Feast of Blood”, published in 1845 by its British authors James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Preskett Prest, tells the story of an aristocrat who preyed on women in a blend of luxury, power, and pleasure. This took place during the rather conservative era of Queen Victoria and highlights the duality of certain pleasures reserved only for the privileged. Some things never change.
In 1909, the English serial killer John Haigh suffered from recurring nightmares in which he found himself in a forest of crucifixes and trees dripping with blood. These dreams tormented him throughout his life until he acted on them and murdered several people to drink their blood.
This fetish is known as clinical vampirism or Renfield Syndrome, and it’s a mental disorder characterized by a compulsive need to see, feel, or ingest blood, as well as the delusion of believing oneself to be a vampire.
Sexologists classify it as a paraphilia and emphasize that it requires not only rigorous consent procedures but also good hygiene practices.
Sex therapists emphasize that these types of role-playing games are harmless, as long as the participants are fully informed adults who understand that it’s a fantasy and not a lifestyle.
Another factor to consider is the risk of ingesting blood, as this could lead to blood-borne infections such as hepatitis or HIV. Similarly, when wounds are inflicted, they must be treated with proper aseptic techniques and care to prevent bacterial infections.
There are many ways to play with blood; some people like to drink it through sangrías (regular sangrías infused with blood), while others prefer “love bites,” which go a step beyond the famous hickeys we all know. Generally, razor blades are used to inflict wounds, since this is a way of expressing intimacy or emotional closeness.
And although this community is usually associated with vampires, blood fetishists don’t consider themselves as such. It’s just that history, psychiatry, and cinema classify them that way.
When sexual games or BDSM involve blood, the terms “blood sports” or “blood play” are used to refer to them. There is also “edgeplay,” or extreme play, which occurs when deep cuts that can cause excessive bleeding are made. In these cases, some use the excess of blood as a lubricant or spread it over their partner’s skin during intimacy.
Following that idea, there’s the practice of “red wings,” which is a fetish for menstrual blood, involving sexual acts such as oral sex or simply having intercourse during menstruation, as this is considered a time when orgasms are more intense.
Maybe many of you have fantasized about being the character in Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, where a wealthy and powerful count hunts down pale virgins to subdue them and keep them under his control, but I bet you never imagined that so many people would decide to create their own real-life adaptation of the story.
If you’d like to explore this theme safely, go ahead, but the important thing is that you and your partner are on the same page and see it as a role-playing game where you’re pretending to be vampires and indulging your fantasies #sinrecato.
Traducción del español: Catalina Oviedo Brugés
