The Men Who Want to Have Sex with Actual Giants

"The first time I had a good tingly feeling was when I was watching Tom have so much fun trying to catch Jerry," she recalls. "I always liked how Jerry got away so that the game would continue. I so badly wanted to be that cat. Little did I know it was the start of my sexuality."

By high school, Katelyn was fantasising about literally crushing her high school crushes, swallowing her boyfriends and girlfriends alive, and putting her entire foot through the school. "Most of the time," she says, "I felt out of place and very alone sexually."

But once she reached university, she discovered – through a Google image search – that there was an entire online community who shared her fetish. Macrophilia (which literally translates to "lover of large") is a fetish whereby people experience sexual arousal while fantasizing about others that are significantly bigger than them. The emphasis being on height, as opposed to width.

It's also known as a "giant" or "giantess'" fetish. And Katelyn discovered that not only was she a macrophile, she was also extremely aroused by the idea of being a giantess herself.

In 2006, the 5ft 2'' American launched her website giantesskatelyn.com "as a sexual outlet for my giantess fetish, and a home for my fans to come and worship me."

There you will find videos for sale – many of which feature miniature, plastic people being swallowed or crushed under huge feet. There are also stories, comics, photographs, collages, a blog, and a link to Katelyn's Amazon wish list, so her worshippers can purchase her gifts: underwear, Starbucks gift cards, vitamins so she can "grow" bigger, and non-stick saucepans. Visiting the site is free, but each month around 700 of her fans make a purchase.

Dr Mark Griffiths, psychologist and professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University, is one of the few academics to have written about macrophilia and is at pains to point out that we know very little about it. "No-one has ever published even so much as an interview with a macrophile in an academic journal," he tells Broadly.

Griffiths writes that the overwhelming majority of macrophiles are thought to be heterosexual males that are sexually attracted to female giantesses:

Katelyn says her preferred size to be changes depends on what mood she's in. "Some days I'm in the mood to play with the entire earth/galaxy, and other times I'm in the mood to attack a lone city as a 100ft woman. I rarely go below 100 feet. Most commonly, however, I'm fantasizing about being mega – 3000-plus feet tall."

Because of the fantasy aspect of the fetish, the internet is the macrophile's playground. There they can read stories and look at comics, artwork and photographs (often Photoshopped to include fake giants), and watch videos featuring giantesses playing with tiny people and trampling small, model cities.

Some of the videos involve CGI and have high production values, others are more like home movies where the camera is positioned at a low angle to make everything seem bigger. Many giantesses offer custom made videos where the client can dictate the story line.

Macrophilia is often accompanied by other fetishes: BDSM, vorarephilia (a fixation with eating or swallowing), and crush fixations, whereby a person becomes sexually aroused by crushing objects or watching objects be crushed.

In addition to her giantess fetish, Katelyn (who is bisexual) says she also has an "extreme" mouth fetish. She says this is on par with her giantess fetish, and is supplemented by furry and hentai fetishes. Hentai being a genre of anime and manga pornography.

Dr Griffiths believes the roots of most fetishes lie in childhood and early adolescence, "where sexual arousal is, at first, accidentally associated with giants - maybe watching a TV program where a giantess initiates feelings of sexual arousal".

"Over time," he says, "the giant itself is enough to cause sexual arousal through classical conditioning. However, as there are no case studies in the literature, this is complete speculation on my part."

Mark, a macrophile and one of Katelyn's worshippers, remembers seeing a re-run of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman when he was around 13 years old. "The POV view of Allison Hayes walking across the desert was the first time I can recall being turned on," he tells me. "Seeing her tear the roof off of the building to get at her husband overwhelmed my young brain at the time.

"Shortly after that, another movie called Village of the Giants did the same thing. I can remember one of the giantesses in the movie said something like: 'Oh, why don't I just step on him?' which again turned my underage mind on like nothing prior."

Power, domination and vulnerability are at the heart of macrophilia, says director of Sex Therapy Australia and sex and relationship therapist, Pamela Supple. "It's allowing your mind to go wherever it wants to go, whilst engaging in play to gain the maximum sexual arousal. Some want to feel and experience terror – being crushed or controlled. Everyone is different in what they want to experience."

For Mark, the attraction to giantesses is about the feelings of insignificance it gives him. "I would be uncontrollably drawn to her beauty and power despite the danger such an encounter would bring," he says. "As a superior being, she would have little regard for me other than supplying her own needs. Whether it be as food to nourish her superior body, or as a sexual play toy to be used and broken after, I would have no other choice other than submit myself to her.

"To have my life be hers to do with as she pleased would become the sole purpose for my existence. The exhilaration, danger, fear and sexual excitement would outweigh my very instinct for survival. I only wish it would become real."

Both Supple and Dr Griffiths believe macrophilia has enjoyed a massive surge in popularity in the past few years, citing the internet's crucial role in helping to both create and facilitate the fetish. And, in some cases, introducing the fetish to those who have been looking for a name for what they feel.

Semeraz, another of Katelyn's worshippers, says that he didn't know macrophilia "was a thing" until he discovered Katelyn's website. Before then, he says he remembers being in fifth grade and playing a game where the teacher assigned team names of "predator" and "prey" and becoming excited when a girl taunted him saying: "We're going to eat you!"

"But I never thought of it as a sexual fetish until running into Katelyn's site," he adds.

When Katelyn started her website, she says the giantess community was still niche. "It only had a handful of websites and contributors, a lot of lurkers – fetishes were much more taboo a decade ago – the content production was scarce and I was the only girl who had come out of the closet with the giantess fetish.

"Members thought there was no way a girl could have the giantess fetish. That made me feel alone, because I was the only giantess, and a lot of people doubted my sexuality. Nowadays, there's so much giantess fetish content that you wouldn't be able to see everything in a lifetime. There are millions of collages, stories, artists, producers, models, videos, and more."

Maintaining her website is now Katelyn's full-time job. Does she find it difficult having a real-life relationship due to the nature of her work? "Most of the time I feel like I'm in a relationship with my job," she says. "We spend a lot of time together and it's one of the best feelings in the world when my labors of love give someone else the feeling of sexual and emotional fulfillment.

"I hope to give the same feeling to a special someone someday."