zHEIGHTgeist

Your receptionist announces that a strange package has been delivered to your office. Several of you gather in the lobby, looking it over: it was clearly labeled for your company, with accurate overseas postage, just no point of contact listed. You decide to open it, finding what looks like a retro sci-fi pistol labeled “Shrink Ray.” Of course it doesn’t work, just makes a noise and shoots sparks, but something inside the box pops and you all breathe a sweet-smelling gas that shrinks everyone down to only a few inches tall. Some are stranded high upon the plateau of the receptionist’s desk, most of you are sprawled across the floor like litter. You look up to see one of the project managers returning from lunch, head held high and lost in thought, shoes pounding closer and closer to your little group.

This episode, among all others, comes with a content warning: I’m going to talk about dubious consent and nonconsensual sexual fantasy, forced sex and rape fantasy, in the context of the Unaware Size fetish. I will try to treat these with respect and responsibility, emphasizing the irrefutable line between fantasy and reality. Your head is your private domain, you can think about and fantasize about anything you like, but when you inflict your values upon the real world, and they violate someone else’s rights to life, liberty, and their pursuit of happiness, you’re wrong. If you do not have clear consent, you’re wrong. There’s no two ways around it: our fantasies must never impinge upon anyone else’s right to life, at all, ever, period. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please call RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) at 800.656.4673 or contact them online at online.rainn.org for more resources and support. You deserve to be safe, healthy, and loved. Yes, you do.

For the sixth episode I’m going to discuss the Unaware fantasy, a risque and sensitive fantasy that can easily turn dark. Size Fantasy, like most sexual fantasies, provides a range of stimulation for a variety of appetites. As we’ve talked about in previous episodes, people may pursue sexual fantasy because they’re into sensory overload, blocking out the concerns of the world, taking or surrendering control to a partner, feeling loved and desired, losing one’s sense of self in the process, rapt in intense pleasure. And I’ve shown how Size Fantasy provides all this as well, in sexual situations that can seem like analogies a little too on the nose. People falsely attribute this quote to Oscar Wilde: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Sounds like him, but Quote Investigator was unable to locate a definitive source for this highly useful line. Sex is about power, especially in Size Fantasy. This should be obvious to everyone.

Unaware has to do with situations in which one person is not aware of the other person in an intimate encounter, sexual or otherwise. This can look like a tiny person crawling over the body of a larger, sleeping person, or a small person climbing the clothing of a larger person as they go about their day, or even the life-or-death adventure of dodging the feet of gigantic pedestrians. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to contrive situations in which the larger person is the active participant and the tiny person is unconscious or insensible. While there are no statistics on this, I’ll suggest that the majority of Unaware scenarios in Size Fantasy have to do with tiny person’s thrill at exploring or exploiting a much larger person without their awareness. I would say “knowledge or consent,” but the fantasy is less about the violation of consent and more about satisfying one’s curiosity about a person’s body, or simply trying to stay alive and unharmed on their person while they achieve an objective.

In stories with the content warning for noncon, it’s clear that one of the characters is exploiting the other without permission or consent, and that is part of the thrill of the fantasy. It can be dark. In dubcon stories, or dubious consent, this may look like someone who shrinks down and has the chance to explore their partner while they’re asleep. It’s dubious because, while the tiny person did not warn their partner that they would do this, they’re already in a relationship and, conceivably, each of them are granted access to all of the outside and some of the inside of each other’s bodies.

In real life, of course, it’s entirely possible for someone to rape their partner. People always have personal areas, and boundaries must be respected at all times. The trust and understanding between partners, married or otherwise, does not extend to acts of violence and domination like this. What I’m discussing now exclusively applies to sexual fantasy and does not function in reality.

Why would someone be fascinated with the Unaware sexual fantasy? One reason might be an intense curiosity, one that can’t be sated in a relatively puritanical society. Our bodies are largely kept as mysteries to each other, even unto ourselves. The artist Jamie McCartney undertook an intriguing project in which he made molds of various women’s vaginas, then created lead crystal casts that reveal how very different the vaginal canal can form in women. Even women look at this display and confess to never suspecting how very unalike their internal regions can be, because that is honestly not the priority of the American educational institution. In our nation, women’s bodies are treated as the exception to normal human anatomy in medicine, and they’re shameful and dirty in social contexts. So if you’re a man who’s curious about women’s bodies, or a woman who’s curious about other women’s bodies, you really only have a few options available to you. Go to your public library and dig through anatomical texts and National Geographic. Ingratiate yourself to an exceedingly patient and understanding woman. Search for free porn online, but try to bear in mind that in many cases, these are not realistic representations of women’s bodies, they’re sensationalized for effect. With all these false flags and obstacles, it’s easy to see how people can be left in the dark even about the primal truth of our bodies.

Size Fantasy is all about the interaction between tiny people and gigantic people, and some of those encounters center on exploring someone else’s body, being overwhelmed by the colossal presence of a giant, giving yourself over to the inundation of sex with a giantess, where everything sexy and attractive is amplified by scale. But in Unaware, studying the detail of the giant body isn’t merely a device to emphasize the discrepancy in sizes: it’s the point of the fantasy. In the scene where a larger person is sleeping, the tiny person is at liberty to explore their body in minute detail, for as long as they wish to. They get to sate this aching curiosity, to begin to answer all the questions that have formed over years. They get to touch the private tissues, peek inside orifices, taste and smell parts of the body that are normally covered in layers of clothing. They can embrace that lovely foot they’ve always lusted after, kissing and licking the darling toes. They can take their chances with kissing gigantic lips and crawling into a huge open mouth, sleepy breath roaring around them. This curiosity could resemble a form of worship, an intentionality that focuses on one large body part to the exclusion of the rest of the person, indeed, the rest of the world.

When the fantasy is sexual, the threat of danger or death heightens the experience. A tiny person who crawls into a sleeping giant’s mouth can swiftly find their end in a number of obvious ways. They could be trapped in an armpit and held in place. If the giant rolls over, the tiny invader could be crushed under a chest, squashed under a breast, or sandwiched in an ass, apprehended for hours until morning, or their little life could be snuffed out then and there. For those who crave the abnegation of the self, the tragedy of being ended like that, accidentally, beneath notice, is the icing on the cake.

The same thrill is laced through the body exploration adventure, where a tiny person has to climb a giant person who’s clearly doing something else. The Tiny has to avoid being stepped on, scramble onto the huge shoe, dig their nails into the huge pants or tights, and push their strength to the limits as they scale a long leg, swinging in great powerful strides. They have to avoid the huge hand, unconsciously reaching down to scratch the itch the tiny person causes, long shiny nails scraping the fabric perilously near their frail limbs. They have to prepare for the double-jeopardy of possibly being sat down upon or crushed between the thighs of someone settling into a chair. It’s exciting to be so close to someone so powerful and godlike, but the Tiny person’s goal of making their presence known to them is threatened by the gross mechanisms of that awesome, awful body, and that life-threatening situation easily feeds into heightened awareness and arousal.

Curiosity is one of the two impulses at the core of Unaware, by my estimation. The other… I can’t think of one word for it. It’s an urge to get away with something, to be naughty, to transgress against another person without getting caught. And this is driven and enhanced by the risk of getting caught. So much of Size Fantasy has to do with dancing along the boundary around repercussions, taking chances and risks, gambling one’s safety against the hammer coming down, in the pursuit of one’s fleeting desires. Either we’re the ones taking that risk, going where we shouldn’t, doing things we shouldn’t, trembling with excitement at getting caught, or we’re watching or reading about someone else making these questionable decisions, until they run out of luck, with extreme consequences. That’s the price of curiosity, and yet there’s no shortage of people whose horniness runs converse to their physicality, making them eager to pay that price.

Unaware is the super-category, then, and the subcategories could be described as body adventure or body exploration, noncon or nonconsensual, dubcon or dubious consent, and even rape. Once again, rape is wrong and there is no excuse or reason to commit it. Rape fantasies are something else, the darker region of sexual fantasy, and I’m generally not one to discourage sexual fantasy. I really do believe our minds are the last inviolate sanctum, though obviously some thoughts need to be corrected in order to participate in and contribute to a progressive society, corrected through education, enlightenment, and compassion for others. That’s not to say a completely upright, model citizen couldn’t secretly harbor rape fantasies, though they might be ashamed of them and they know, of course, never to act on them.

It may sound odd to suggest that a tiny person could rape a giant person. This incongruity comes from our conventional understanding of rape as a demonstration of power, and it is supremely unlikely that a person of a few inches tall could demonstrate physical power over someone exponentially more massive than themselves. But rape is also taking advantage of someone who can’t protect themselves, another demonstration of power, and an unaware person falls into that category. A sleeping woman doesn’t know about the tiny man stalking on tiptoe between her thighs, and she can’t defend herself. Certainly, she hasn’t consented to this, and his exploitation of her vulnerability is unquestionably rape, though that may not be the point of the fantasy. It’s a fact of it, if we step out of the story and consider all the repercussions and factors at play, but this is no longer the territory or the point of the fantasy. It’s a real-world scrutiny that has no place here.

Analogous to this, I know a few giantesses, and they have been harassed by people for many reasons, one of which centers on the glorification of violence. When a giantess’s fantasy is to have complete agency and to rise above all possible laws of men and physics, and they just want to kick over buildings to watch them collapse or admire their own potence as their bare hands tear up the landscape, there’s always some would-be critic to ask her, “Why are you aroused by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims?”

Again, this is missing the point of the fantasy. This is deconstructing the fantasy in bad faith, and this is legitimately the appropriate time to use “begs the question,” because we’re questioning the critic’s original premise. Yes, there are tiny people living and working in those cities, as the giantess’s feet stomp through the boulevards and her fists pulverize standing structures like card-houses or Jenga. But the fantasy is just a fantasy, and the focus isn’t on racking up a death toll: the point is to demolish these edifices that are supposed to be eternal and enduring. The point is to be so powerful that nothing can stand against the giantess’s might, to exult in that power and, as with other fantasies, to momentarily displace and forget the world we’re in, a world in which we do not possess the shadow of a fraction of that power, in any sense.

I’ll suggest something similar is going on with the Unaware sexual encounter. Maybe for some people, yes, rape is the point. Maybe their fantasy is to be weak, to go up against someone unquestionably stronger, and to violate and degrade them in a greatly diminished display of power, an improbable act of defiance and insult. It’s a big world and odds are there are people who want this, I won’t say they don’t exist. My feeling, though of course there are no statistics on this, is that more commonly the fantasy is about the exploration of and immersion into an overwhelming sexual experience with a partner who is not participatory. In these situations the tiny person can have agency, like the minuscule invader exploring an attractive person’s body up close, or it could be an experience thrust upon them without hope of escape, like being sat on and ground into the genitalia or orifices or body parts of a humongous yet desirable person. That’s the foundation, that the giant person is someone we’re attracted to and desire intimacy with. It’s just that in these fantasies, the giant person is spread out before us like a vast all-you-can-fuck buffet, or they present a grandiose, unendurable experience that blends sexual consummation with the termination of existence, the force of pleasure so great our frail little bodies can’t withstand it. Not a bad way to go.

If Size Fantasy isn’t your kink, just pause for a minute and think about your partner lying next to you, asleep. Picture someone you’re attracted to, in the momentary dream that you’re together, in a relationship, and there’s every reason for you to be in bed with them. Visualize that scene, their chest slowly rising and falling with the reflex of breathing, their jaw hanging slightly open, their breasts spreading slightly apart or their penis draped over their balls. Picture the innocence of their expression, the profound absence of concern or thought, the social poses dropped for a few hours. Now imagine trailing your fingertips up their arm, without waking them up. Imagine taking up their hand, playing with their fingers, pressing their sleep-warm palm to your cheek. Imagine what it would look and feel like to lean in and kiss them, confident that this would not rouse them. You could kiss them anywhere you want, for as long as you want. Imagine pressing your lips to their slack lips, face-to-face with the face you’ve come to adore, and you can pour embarrassing quantities of your love into it, maybe in a way you couldn’t do if they were awake. Is there anything appealing in that to you? Does any of that sound a little sweet, a little enticing? If so, you’re not a bad person for imagining it. Enjoy that sweetness, even if it’s private. And I didn’t set up a gotcha-scenario to make you complicit in a mixed-size nonconsensual trap. I’m just sharing a little perspective, in a relatable means, to support my premise in this podcast that Size Fantasy really does share a lot in common with many other fantasies.

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Questionnaire: Olo

For this episode, my questionnaire has been answered by Olo, he/him, a figure in the Size Fantasy community beloved as a deep thinker, an excellent writer, and a great source of wit.

He says he prefers mixed-size scenarios between normal-sized people and people who have been shrunken to two or three inches tall. “Sometimes I want to be a shrunken man with a normal-sized woman, and sometimes I want to be a normal-sized man with a shrunken woman.”

My first memory of this fantasy was at age six. A lot of people cite this or that piece of media as inspiring or implanting their fascination with size differential, but in my case I believe I was already thinking about power and domination and how it might be casually and effortlessly exercised, and I was looking for a way to express these thoughts. I didn’t identify with any particular role in these scenarios; I was more like a spectator to a scary fairy tale. At some point I’m sure I saw some children’s entertainment or science fiction story depicting tiny people in peril from regular-size people who were now fantastically more powerful than them, and that’s how the particular form of my dominance fantasies were chosen.

It’s been primarily a sexual thing for me since about age ten. I didn’t figure out the dom/sub angle until many years later, but I have always craved to see the moment when the relatively larger person realizes that they can do whatever they want with the relatively smaller person. The Biggo is liberated, free to indulge their every desire. That’s exhilarating whether I’m the giant taking what I want or I’m the tiny witnessing someone else take what they want.

My size fantasies don’t always center dominance, but the intrinsic power-differential never goes away. I have written Size stories where the giant is kind and respectful and has a caring relationship with the tiny, but the tiny can never fully rely on that. Their relationship has to continually reaccommodate the power-differential.

In many of my Size stories, tinies cannot meaningfully consent to the sexual encounters they have with giants, which makes them rape fantasies. I get off to them whether I imagine a giantess having her way with me or I imagine myself having my way with a shrunken woman. Again, it’s the liberation of desire that does it for me.

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Thanks for listening, I hope this episode means something to someone. And thanks for sticking with me for such a risque topic. We’ve got to be honest and open about these things, sometimes. I would certainly love to hear your thoughts on what I talked about today. Write to me through the podcast’s website at zHeightgeist.com or comment on the show notes.

I’d like to give shout-outs to three listeners who have reached out. Thanks to Big G for pointing out that well-written Metro UK article about “giantess” escalating in popularity on Clips4Sale, and a warm welcome to two newcomers, who’d probably prefer to be nameless for now, and who let me know that they appreciate the show because they thought they were the only people into this fantasy. I think that’s a familiar story among many of us in the community, and one that’s happily disproved.

Episode Links

• RAINN: Resources
• Quote Investigator: Oscar Wilde, “Sex is about power.”
• Jamie McCartney, Internal Vaginas
• Metro UK: “The ‘giantess’ kink was the height of horniness in 2023“
• Olo’s homepage: El Amante Menguante