maddenjac1′s Blog

Virtually anything can serve as a fetish: shoes, leather, silk, whips, chains, rubber, large breasts and even feet. Fetishism can develop around a wide array of objects or body parts, and this is perhaps why this type of sexual behaviour arouses our curiosity.

Emily Cox fantasized about rape when she was young. Today she has a fetish for male dominants. She has evolved a lot but her need to relinquish total control has remained consistent. It’s the only way she can relax, the only thing that distracts her from her incessant thoughts.

“I really like having a male dominant take control of me,” she says. “I’ve been on my own since I was 16, and I carry a lot of baggage from my past. I’ve always had to be responsible and be in control so that my life doesn’t spiral. When I get to relinquish that control to someone else, it’s a break for me. I like feeling helpless in a man’s arms, and I can’t turn off my mind any other way.”

John Baku was young when he started having urges to hurt the girl he loved. This repulsed him. It made him feel sick and ashamed. He could not understand why he was unable to stop fantasizing about hurting her. What was wrong with him?

Baku struggled a lot to accept his fetish, and this eventually led him to create the website fetlife.com, a free social network for the BDSM and fetish community. He started the website because he wanted people to be informed.

“I wanted to start a social network where people could communicate, where they could talk about their fetishes and ask questions,” he explains. “When I was young I never realized that my fetish was normal. I thought there was something wrong with me. I cried the first time I had to admit to my girlfriend that I fantasized about hurting her in the bedroom. It would really have helped me to talk to someone about it at the time.”

Isa Beau was 16 when she discovered her fetish. It was instantaneous. She saw a picture of a woman wearing latex and it immediately became her obsession. She began a frantic quest to find this exact material. Its shine was what attracted her most. She said she knew right away that her attraction was biological.

Beau now organizes Montreal’s Kinky Festival, the Fool’s Fetish Ball and owns a fetish store.

“My friends and family had a really hard time coming to terms with my career, but at the end of the day it has helped me mature in numerous ways,” she says. “You have to ask yourself what kind of person you are if you’re able to embrace something that is outside the norm. I’m not like everybody else. I’m unique and I think it’s healthy.”

Where do fetishes come from? According to most psychologists, fetishes usually develop during childhood and adolescence, though the exact causes are difficult to determine.

“Fetishes typically develop during a precautious period of puberty,” explains Dr. James Pfaus, professor of sexual behaviour at Concordia University. “They are influenced by biological, psychological and sociocultural phenomena.”

Most of the early explanations of fetishism focus on the psychoanalytic theory, which states that fetishism is “the result of intrapsychic conflicts stemming from unresolved issues in an individual’s personal history.”

The difficulty in determining the exact causes of fetishistic behaviour was best articulated by Dr. Roy. F. Baumeister, who wrote that human sexuality is “a rich, confusing tangle, in which biological drives, sociocultural meanings, formative individual experiences, and additional unknown factors play powerful roles.”

“Fetishes are instinctual,” says Dr. Pfaus. “Humans learn at an early period of sexual development what they like and what they don’t like. Some things become more predictive of pleasure and so we go after those things and find a way to incorporate them into out lives. Fetishes show you a very high degree of plasticity and a high degree of behavioural flexibility in terms of what it was that was there during someone’s formative sexual experience.”

Fetishism appeared in the late 1500s and originated from the Portguese word feitico, which means “obsessive fascination.” The term was borrowed from anthropological writing in which “fetish” referred to a charm thought to contain magical or spiritual powers.

According to Dr. Pfaus, a fetish is typically defined as an abnormal sexual desire or arousal for an object rather than a person.

But Beau believes that the definition of a fetish needs to be updated because it portrays fetishism as something dark and dysfunctional.

“People are afraid of what they don’t know, so they rule it as improper,” says Beau. “When I tell people I have a fetish store they think I’m weird. But really my clients are all normal people who work and have families and are not obsessed. Fetishism can be very artistic and rewarding.”

Cox agrees. She believes there are a lot of judgments and misunderstandings about kinks and fetishes.

“A fetish is simply any object or activity that causes arousal in an individual,” she says “rather than something that the person has to live every day by.”

According to Psychology Today, there is a degree of fetishistic arousal in most “normal” individuals who find certain body features attractive. Does this mean that every individual has a fetish?

The American Psychiatric Association claims that, other than fetishes that have developed clinical significance, it is virtually impossible to estimate the prevalence of fetishism due to the secretive nature of the behaviour, fantasies and urges.

When exploring the realm of fetishism in contemporary society, one begins to wonder who and what is nowadays considered to be “normal.” It becomes fascinating and perplexing to observe how attraction to certain body parts or objects is considered acceptable, while an attraction to others is labelled as perverse and weird.

“Really one can consider [fetishes] to be completely normal,” says Dr. Pfaus. “Part of the processes that underlie their development are exactly the same as those sexual desires that people typically don’t consider to be fetishes: facial features, body type features, hair colour or eye colour.”

The array of objects and body parts that serve as fetishes are almost as numerous and unique as the individuals who posses the attractions to these objects.

In Chalkley and Powell’s 1983 review of fetishism, clothing was reported to be the most common fetish, followed by rubber, footwear, parts of the body, leather, clothes made of soft fabric and items made of silk.

Throughout each era, one can observe diverse arrays of fetishes that at the time were considered to be acceptable; these differed according to the cultural norms of each generation.

“In the 1920s, throwing water on boustiers was a fetish” says Dr. Pfaus, “whereas now we have wet t-shirt contests. Nowadays we also tend to see bondage and discipline and sadomasochism.”

Various authors have highlighted the influence of culture and socialization on human sexual desire. For example, while some cultures place great erotic significance on particular body parts, other cultures demonstrate greater tolerance for certain sexual behaviour such as childhood sexual activity. This epitomizes the creativity and plasticity of the human brain when it comes to sexual behaviour.

“Cultures go through epics,” says Dr. Pfaus. “Homosexuality in Greece was accepted. It was the norm. Different generations go through different things that define their norm.”

When one lives in a society whose dictation of the “norm” is not complementary to one’s own sexual behaviour, one’s source of arousal can become distressing and embarrassing, and thus no longer a source of absolute pleasure.

As stated by the American Psychiatric Association’s website, some individuals experience extreme feelings of guilt, shame and depression regarding their “unusual” sexual activity, while others report having little distress as a result of their behaviour, except possibly distress regarding the reactions of others.

At which point then does a fetish go from being a source of immense arousal and gratification to something that inhibits an individual’s life and sexual experiences?

According to Psychology Today, fetishism is generally characterized as a disorder when there is a pathological assignment of sexual fixation, fantasies or behaviours toward an inanimate object, frequently an item of clothing-such as underclothing or a high-heeled shoe-or to non-genital parts-such as the foot. Over time, it is only through the use of the object that the individual is able to obtain sexual gratification.

“The naughty value is what makes a fetish so arousing,” explains Dr. Pfaus. “If you lose the naughty value then you have to up the criteria. We are creatures of habit, and when a fetish becomes habitual from a sexual standpoint, we become bored. This is when a fetish can become detrimental. It really affects what the person thinks of themselves because now they’re bored of something that played a huge part of their identity. When people are no longer attracted to that thing or to a person, they sink into depression.”

According to Dr. Pfaus, treatment for individuals with debilitating fetishes, such as pedophilia, is extremely difficult.

“Treatment is really challenging because their arousal depends on it and the reward they get from it. It’s like treating drug addiction.”

But what exactly determines whether an individual will be attracted to panties or shoes? In Chalkley’s report, twenty per cent of the individuals studied could not explain their fetishes, while fifty per cent “attributed their arousal to the sensual aspects of the fetish object” and thirty per cent attributed their sexual attraction to the object’s symbolization of strength and power.

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