Here Cums the Sun

Does sexual arousal to the sun exist?

When Nelly wrote the lyrics “it’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes” for his 2002 hit song, he probably had no idea how hot it can actually get for some people.

Why? Because despite the temperature generated from a roomful of scantily clad video vixens, he probably never heard of actirasty. And chances are, neither have you.

I hadn’t either until recently, when I was listening to The Beatles and for some reason wondered if someone could be turned on by the sun. A quick search revealed that there is such a fetish. Of course, if you’re like me, when you find out that sexual attraction to the sun’s rays is an actual thing, you burn to know more about it. So I enlisted the help of psychiatrist Anil Aggrawal, who wrote about hundreds of fetishes in Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices*, to shed some light on this hot topic.

“The pleasure is so intense that the person mistakenly shifts the identity to the weather, rather than to the sexual event itself.” — Anil Aggrawal

Much to my disappointment, Aggrawal let me know that there’s not a lot of information out there on this particular fetish because it’s extremely rare.

“Very few authentic cases of actirasty have been reported,” he said. “None have been reported to a psychologist, psychiatrist, or mental hospital. Thus, no research has occurred on the etiological development of actirasty.”

Which also means, if you feel like your sunbathing is getting you hot and bothered in a sexual way, and you want treatment so you can go to the beach in peace, there’s probably nothing a doctor can do. However, if Aggrawal did happen to see a patient he thought may have a legitimate case of actirasty, he surmised he would diagnose it this way: “If it came to me, I would take a detailed history, and then carefully do some experiments. For example, exposing the person to various sources of light, including the sun. I would also like to increase and decrease luminosity, change colors, use strobe lights, etc., to see if they have any effect on them.”

“A quiver in my loins just thinking about the weather….” –Not quite 10,000 Maniacs

It turns out, the weather may be a lot sexier than you think. There are several examples of weather-related fetishes that have been identified by Aggrawal, including attraction to thunder and lightning (keraunophilia), fog (nebulophilia), tornadoes (lilapsophilia), and snow (chionophilia).

But are any of them actually real?

“I would not be surprised if the original reported fetish was something, and it got completely changed once it passed through hundreds of people.” — Anil Aggrawal

According to Aggrawal, they may largely be a thing of urban legend, created by a long game of telephone turned erotic.

“Perhaps somebody confided this fetish to a friend, and then the friend told it to another. The chain must have gone on and on and as the chain gets longer, the original communication tends to get distorted,” Aggrawal said. “So I would not be surprised if the original reported fetish was something, and it got completely changed once it passed through hundreds of people.”

Well, that put a wet blanket on my curiosity. But what about the people who may have confided in a friend about their arousal to weather before the message got distorted? How does something like this get started in the first place?

“Sometimes a nice sexual event may happen in a particular weather. And then the pleasure is so intense that the person mistakenly shifts the identity to the weather, rather than to the sexual event itself,” Aggrawal explained. “It is like a case of classical conditioning, like the experiments of Pavlov with his dog. Something like that, when the dog starts salivating by seeing a light. I am sure the dog would have salivated to the sun’s light if Pavlov had associated food with that.”

So the bad news is, if you’re like me and your curiosity about these fetishes has been peaked, unfortunately there’s not a lot of information available to quench your thirst. But the good news is, to whatever extent they do exist, these fetishes are not harmful and certainly not as eyebrow-raising as some of the others Aggrawal has written about, such as attractions to vomiting (emetophilia), lice (phthiriophilia), and bees (melissophilia). With that in mind, go bask in the sun, take a long walk in the rain, enjoy the sound of a thunderstorm. But you probably don’t want to chase tornadoes, no matter how sexy you think they are.

*This article contains affiliate links.

More from Kiki Wellington:

Sources:

Aggrawal, A. (2020). Personal interview.

DiSalvo, D. (2013, November 19). Getting In Touch With Your Inner Sexual Deviant. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuronarrative/201311/getting-in-touch-your-inner-sexual-deviant

Griffiths, M. (2013, March 27). There’s no business like snow business: A brief look at sex and the weather. Dr Mark Griffiths. https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/theres-no-business-like-snow-business-a-brief-look-at-sex-and-the-weather/

Griffiths, M. (2016, August 14). Don’t worry, bee happy: Another very brief look at melissophilia. Dr Mark Griffiths. https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/dont-worry-bee-happy-another-very-brief-look-at-melissophilia/

Griffiths, M. (2016, August 26). From the university of perversity: An A to Z of non-researched sexual paraphilias (Part 4). Dr Mark Griffiths. https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/from-the-university-of-perversity-an-a-to-z-of-non-researched-sexual-paraphilias-part-4/

Griffiths, M. (2017, April 4). Feeling hot, hot, hot: A brief look at sex and the sun. Dr Mark Griffiths. https://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/feeling-hot-hot-hot-a-brief-look-at-sex-and-the-sun/