thumb|Frames from the 1930s [[stag film The Hypnotist]]
Erotic hypnosis is a broad term for a variety of erotic activities involving hypnosis. Erotic hypnosis is most often practiced in the context of BDSM relationships and communities. Several practitioners have compared the sensation of trance to subspace.
Society and culture
Cinema and stag films
Hypnosis had a link to perceptions of erotic and criminal transgression in mainstream cinema, particularly in the early to mid-twentieth century, popularising the idea of the "evil hypnotist" and the "scientific brainwasher." These tropes were replicated in stag films at the time, such as the 1930s stag film The Hypnotist.
Videos consisting of rapidly edited sexual clips combined with text or audio that caters to fantasies of being brainwashed, for example into feminization, have gained in popularity. A 2023 study in Sexuality & Culture found that "sissy hypno" content is viewed by cisgender men, as well as transgender women who may use the media "as a tool of sexual identity affirmation and further sexual exploration." Another article in Transgender Studies Quarterly found that for transgender women, these videos "create space for viewers to experiment with gendered embodiment through imagining a future-oriented transformation into a trans* subject."
Controversy
Erotic hypnosis (sometimes branded "Hypnokink") content has been subject to restrictions on pornographic websites for a combination of reasons, though particularly due to concerns about sexual consent. Proponents of hypnosis pornography argue that it is an example of consensual non-consent, and that many examples of hypnosis in fictional media portray it as non-consensual, leading to the belief that hypnotized performers do not fully consent to the experience in real life.
In 2023, an article from BuzzFeed News alleged a series of recordings known as Bambi Sleep had eroded and violated the consent of their hypnotic subjects by supposedly creating "obedient, feminine, dim-witted, sex-obsessed people" who could not recall the incidents afterwards. Other practitioners of erotic hypnosis criticized the article, agreeing that the files were "unsafe," but arguing that the article portrayed the community as a "monolith," and that "Bambi Sleep is a tiny part of an intensely broad hypnokink space."