The Construction Of Catgirls

There were catgirls on ErosBlog within the first year of publication, way back in 2003. But I cannot say for certain whether I had carved out a category for catgirls in my erotic imagination prior to 2009, when Dr. Faustus, then co-blogging here at ErosBlog, wrote this essay on porn as an engine of progress in which he discussed hedonism, neophorics, and catgirls.

Starting from a launchpad quote by Eliezer Yudkowsky about living in a volcanic lair with a bevy of sexy catgirls, Dr. Faustus concluded that erotic pleasure drives innovation, and optimistically suggested that “maybe someday some clever bioengineer will actually deliver up a catgirl.”

While we all waited for bioengineering to get catgirls sorted out, heroic cosplayers were working the problem. Ears got better, tails got better, people were making their own fun. Catgirls are now easy to find. I’ve enjoyed encountering them on social media for many years.

However, after getting on Mastodon a couple years ago, it began to seem like catgirls were suddenly everywhere. So many catgirls! I swam along quite happily in this newly-discovered sea of parasocial catgirls until it gradually began to dawn on me: many catgirls are transwomen. Likewise puppy girls, bunny girls, fox girls, and so forth. But especially cat girls.

Please don’t demand that I prove this assertion. Upon briefest consideration, you would realize that the evidentiary requirements would make that effort ridiculous, impossible, and rude. Nonetheless, I believe it to be so.

Once I came to that conclusion, I had to decide how I felt about it. After a bit of processing, I realized I didn’t care even a little bit. If there’s still a component of trans panic in my psychosexual makeup, it’s going to rear up in situations more closely intimate than I am ever likely to experience with catgirls on social media. I don’t need to give a fuck, so I don’t give a fuck. That’s allowed me to enjoy the “clicker trained” meme beyond all reason. It’s also why I love the endless parade of TikTok memes like this one from NekoSheryl. They all feature someone responding to an inappropriate gender query with “You want to do a questionnaire and find out? Or do you wanna kiss and then feel out how you feel afterwards?”

It’s the perfect response to a question that’s super ridiculous. There are very few contexts where such a questioner has any need to know, and in all of them, the kiss will yield a more useful answer than the questionnaire.

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• "Who's A Good Girl?"
• Moment Of Joy #6
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• Kenneling The Catgirl
• Leopard Girls From The Dance Halls Of Paris
• Vanessa Del Rio, Cat Girl
• Bunny Girls Of 1926
• Dungeon Catgirl
• Wanted: One Cat Girl (Hold The Meow)

Leopard Girls From The Dance Halls Of Paris

Catgirls have always been popular! According to Au carrefour étrange, these sparkling sequin-covered leopard girls graced one of the great burlesque halls of Paris, such as the Lido, the Carrousel or the Folies Bergère:

The photo is by Daniel Frasnay from the 1960 German book Paris Review.

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• Vanessa Del Rio, Cat Girl
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Porn: An Engine Of Progress

I mount the pulpit again for another Sunday sermon.

There is a common accusation cast against pornography, indeed against erotic arts of any kind, indeed against anything resembling a hedonistic theory of value, that it encourages people to be passive, to be mere consumers, couch potatoes even. I am in the pulpit this week to tell you that this is not true.

I’ll coin a term to cover the broad concept I need: neophorics, the bearing of the new — to represent together invention, creation, discovery, innovation — that lie at the heart of progress, whether in the sciences or the arts or in engineering. And I shall use an older word — hedonics — to represent the art of achieving enjoyment (and correspondingly avoiding suffering) in sentient experience. That the erotic arts and practices are a big part of hedonics I doubt many readers of ErosBlog will deny.

The key to understanding here is that hedonics and neophorics are intimately connected, as entwined with each other as the coupling snakes seen by Teiresias of old. Each needs and drives the other, and would wither without the other.

Hedonics needs neophorics. A simple thought experiment should make this clear. Take your favorite fantasy, the thing that makes you really hot, your best personal X in the language of earlier sermons. Eliezer Yudkowsky at one point offered “living in your volcano lair with a bevy of sexy (and presumably eager, skilled, and willing) catgirls” as an example of one that someone might have (it’s not my X and I don’t think it’s Eliezer’s X either, but it’s a good example). Now ask yourself: is that all you would want to do with the rest of your life? Or if the fond wishes of transhumanism are realized and you become effectively immortal, is that all you would want to do for the next thousand years? The next million? Wouldn’t there come a point at which you would get bored? Feel a lack of achievement? Wouldn’t your life be much better — even in purely hedonic terms — if you could be surprised by things at some point? Get outside your lair and meet something or someone that wasn’t a catgirl? There will always come a point for the sort of beings that we are at which something new will be needed in our lives. That’s one reason why I urge people who can to get busy in the arts and create new erotica.

But what’s more, hedonics drives neophorics. The quest for pleasure is a mighty force for innovation. I cannot think of any artistic medium aside from absolute music (and maybe not even that) that has not been pushed forward by the drive for erotic satisfaction. As soon as the Greeks figured out how to paint on vases they were painting amazing orgy scenes on them. As soon as the camera was invented someone took his clothes off in front of one. The Internet really is for porn, like the song says, and certainly wouldn’t have been built out as fast as it was had people not wanted to look at naughty pictures or share naughty stories.

And it’s not just erotic pleasures that drive achievement. Centuries ago there were great voyages of exploration motivated by…the search for fisheries? The quest for new fields in which to plant barley? No, by search for cheaper and better ways to get pleasure commodities, silk and spices. No one ever perished for want of the taste of cinnamon or the touch of silk, but many men nonetheless risked their lives to get these things. And out of these voyages grew mighty forms of commerce,not just in silk and spices, but in other tangible forms of enjoyment: coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, sugar, wine, spirits, and lets face it, opium and other drugs.

And the neophorics will go on and on, driven by hedonics. Right now we are just scratching the surface with new media like video games. Immersive virtual reality is probably yet to come. And who knows? Maybe someday some clever bioengineer will actually deliver up a catgirl.

The lesson to take away? There is nothing passive about porn. It is an engine of progress.