Hi Mia,

I find myself not genuinely arguing against what you are saying. Initially, when I read your topic, I was a little hard pressed to find a response at all - because in a way, your 'question' itself unveiled an interesting matter about people's erotic psychology that is not really a question but more of a simply interesting fact about or facet of people.

However 'why...' And I now think there are at least two different things to consider here. One, the erotic and psycho-sexual, and two, people's attraction to completely other, that is, non-sexually-loaded qualities of hugeness. With the latter, I have always been a proponent of the idea that there is a fraudulent propaganda of size - people think more of the bigger, assuming it to also have the quality of 'moreness' in it, when it often doesn't. And we live in a political world that worships hugeness due to this fraudulent aspect, with consequences that mean there is inadequate reward for such worshipping. You may be right that a lot of people admired the hugeness of Empire and the feeling of safety or secureness in size. I can't argue that people don't do that.

Of course, personally, I am much more interested in the erotic aspects of the creature metaphor. Indeed, as you say, the qualities of the monster are several in number: power, animal directness, freedom from human responsibility, wildness, perhaps even genital size... There are likely many many more aspects I can't think of immediately.

Who can fail to introduce the story of Caliban from The Tempest and the idea that absent of ever knowing examples of beauty, it might be the case that a person might consider an ugly but virile creature handsome or beautiful - and this is the only story I know of that doesn't fall into my basic theory. But that there are positive qualities to the monstrous is key to every single one of the literary monsters I am aware of - Mary Shelley's Monster, even the Greek myth's Medusa acted loyally to protect her children though they were monsters, Werner Herzog's super-powerful Nosferatu is a strange helpless almost innocent almost childlike needy ego when under the spell of Mina Harker (admittedly a complex one that...)

Shakespeare, I think most closely gets to the idea that in fact, the erotic itself, IS in some way monstrous. 

Taking things from the viewpoint of typical society, we could say that 'the erotic' IS a monster we have inside a social and conscious psychological cage. To a very large extent I believe that is the way the majority of people do think. It is not however, the way I think.

There potentially is a slight difference in the way a stridently heterosexual male might view things compared to how an insightful woman might with respect to the metaphor of, or indeed the monster per se. Although, some males might look at the aspect of large sexual endowment, the aspect of great physical power, and creature drives and consider these aspects to be the bases of some sort of erotic sensation.   

By 'erotic' I myself always tend to mean in my own head 'a turn on,' and I have never had a set of barriers or boundaries that restricted anything so rigidly that I personally look for metaphors and psychological 'break-outs' and so on. Necessarily therefore, neither do I have a lot erotically or sexually to do with a vast number of people, because the amount of people who share my attitudes and libertine outlook are extremely few. I think I am erotically autistic(!) (no such actual diagnostic thing, I think) for I cannot, though, understand people who are very good looking and yet are also not libertine, and thus, no matter what they look like, I do not actually get erotic feelings for or about them at all unless they CLEARLY exhibit a deliberate erotic intent in my direction... And I never have felt otherwise as far as I am aware. The older I have gotten, the greater has been my comprehension that very few people experience things this way at all. Sexually, I have been completely spoiled many who know me say.

I don't think I personally would be 'turned on' by something monstrous. I haven't had such an experience thus far anyway.

At the same time I get no feeling at all at the ground level of let's say - dresses tight in certain areas, or stilettos, or lipstick and eyelashes, or curves and symmetrical faces and all those things on their own.

I think I made the mistake of being born into a family of uncles in Shell Oil Trust, Bayer and the like - their family-level social coterie included girls and women who could not have cared less about money because they had so much, and were reasonably good enough looking without make-overs, and in any case had the best stylists and clothes and so REALLY DID look good, and who were so bored with Mont Clare College that they spent a lot of time paying for secrets and scandal about people and about sex from the Zurich madams who had the dick size of every politician male and female south of Pierre Trudeau - and whose mothers had had friendships in any case with Ian Fleming. In other words, I had become used at a very early age to observing when a woman is looking at you for something other than money or to make a joke at your expense. 

I have never made a pass at a woman; that is, not before sometimes as much as several days AFTER I realised what was actually going on. I'm not too smart, as it turns out.

...Just kidding, but I'm sure THAT will take a few whiners into the fray. I, at least, have never been in the so-called 'War of the Sexes.' It sounds like a silly war, to me.

About four years ago, my younger business partners were walking through the local city main street along with me, and we walked past Germaine Greer. Not one of them even flickered the slightest dim recognition of her on their faces. Nobody of today's generation knew her at all. Frankly I was taken aback 1. that I was becoming so old, and 2. that no one recognised her in spite of the literary, media and academic propaganda that was and still is, constant enough.

I must qualify that not all the rich that I know are hyper-sexual. No, only the very very idle of them. And the very very beautiful.
 
I am not myself wealthy, by the way. Although I have spent a million dollars personally once or twice in the past. And plan to do so again.

'J'