“I was damn near willing to just let him talk to me crazy, because that shit was out of this world,” says singer Ari Lennox on her spoken-word skit for Jazmine Sullivan’s Heaux Tales album. “That dick spoke life into me. Invigoration, blessings, soul, turmoil, but heaven. Jesus, Allah, sorry. Please God, understand. This is just my truth.”
It’s a short passage, but one that perfectly sums up what it’s like to be dickmatized. According to Urban Dictionary, to be dickmatized is to convince yourself you’re “catching feelings for a guy when really you’re just catching feelings for the dick.” It’s about being fucked so good that you abandon all logic — you know the guy is an asshole, but his cock feels so great that you ignore the red flags and dive headfirst into his bed anyway. Other definitions describe it as literal hypnosis, explaining that dickmatization is “when you’ve had a man sex you so good that you feel hypnotized from the dick itself. You feel drunk and dizzy.”
There’s evidence on Reddit that it’s not just tied to dicks, either. In a hugely popular thread about dickmatization, one guy describes being titmatized and assmatized by his “adorable elf” ex-wife, while a woman describes the “lesbian equivalent” of being unable to leave her “psychopath ex” because she could “eat cunt like she fucking breathed it.”
They’re all describing a similar phenomenon, but the biggest question remains: Can penis or a tiddy really put you under a spell?
As always, the answer is complicated. During sex, your brain is literally firing on all cylinders — by the time you’ve cum, more than 30 major brain systems have been activated. During the lead-up to orgasm, the brain partially shuts down its lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which is responsible for “reason, decision-making and value judgements.” The amygdala, which controls fear and anxiety, and the hippocampus, which controls memory and awareness, also go to sleep. Basically, it’s called “being fucked senseless” for a reason.
When you reach orgasm, hormones like dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin — all associated with pleasure — course through your body, furthering the “high” you might feel from being in that state. According to neuroscientist Nicole Prause, there’s an element of “neural disinhibition” involved that can result in hazy, out-of-body feelings, again, not unlike the ones you’d get from hypnosis.
But when I ask Prause about the phenomenon of dickmatization, she’s stumped. “That’s a new idea to me,” she says, before veering off into a conversational direction I didn’t expect: “The most likely origin of this phenomenon is psychological — a person can see how big the penis is, and then the idea of that penis being large probably increases their felt experience of sexual arousal.”
Oh, so only big dicks can dickmatize?
Well, maybe not. Although the vagina is “pretty insensitive,” Prause continues, adding that “it has poor temperature and pain detection, as well as a high vibratory threshold,” it does have stretch mechanoreceptors — sensory neurons that make your body adapt and react in certain ways.
In other words, when you’re being fucked by a big dick in particular, these mechanoreceptors are activated — essentially, “a vagina can sense the difference in penile size, especially girth, well,” she explains. However, she continues, “I’ve never seen greater activation of these mechanoreceptors associated with any measure of sexual response.”
Post-sex dizziness can occur too, but that’s usually symptomatic of stress, changing positions too quickly or underlying health issues — so if you feel “drunk or dizzy” after sex, as the definition of dickmatization suggests, you should probably see a medical professional. As for the phenomenon of hypnosis, it’s not as straightforward as “you can be fucked into a trance” — you can’t. As erotic hypnotists know well, it takes a complete willingness to be mesmerized — and a protracted induction sequence — to truly, unknowingly submit to instructions. Thus, unless you’re fucking a qualified erotic hypnotist, it’s unlikely you’re being “dickmatized” in any real way.
As plenty of us know, though, being in love can make you do dumb shit — and if he’s got a good cock, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling under a love spell. But that’s not actually happening — dickmatization is pretty much a cultural term as opposed to a scientific one, and unfortunately, there’s little legit evidence to soothe your soul if you’re letting a dude treat you like trash in exchange for a decent-sized dong. As one dude summarizes in the aforementioned Reddit thread: “What I’ve learned from this is that men with good dicks are mostly dicks.”
And so, the minute you feel woozy from the earliest signs of dickmatization, run as fast as you can in the other direction.
Jake Hall
Jake Hall is a freelance journalist, fashion features editor and author. Their debut book 'The Art of Drag' is scheduled for release in May 2020.
