By Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino, PhD and Conall Mac Cionnaith, PhD
Unlike many animals, humans have discovered an almost infinite amount of ways to have sex, and things to have sex with. The famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey claimed, “the unnatural sex act is that which can’t be performed.” For humans, one of the best examples of this “anything goes” approach to sex are fetishes.
Fetishes contribute to healthy, playful, and varied sexual life of any individuals and couples, and can form the basis of exclusive sexual sub-cultures. Many people have one or two fetishes in their intimate lives and this manifests in its own unique form, pace, and intensity. Unfortunately, fetishes have often been associated with sexual perversion and deviancy. Due to the negative stigma associated with fetishes, it’s easy to feel weird or shameful about fetishes, but provided what you do is between consensual adults (or objects), this is something you should embrace. Sexual repression and lack of sexual fulfillment is not what the doctor ordered.
In the following article, we would like to take look under the covers and paint a more positive view of these “perversions.” We will highlight the good, the bad, and the “ugly” of fetishes, arguing why they are a crucial, rather normal, and healthy part of a healthy sex life. Since we are all pervs—yes, you are on Pornhub right now—we would like you to believe and feel okay about those obscure and dirty sexual desires you might. We would like to offer you with the good, the bad, and the ugly of fetishes.
What are Fetishes?
From foot fetishes to the kinkiest outfit or practices, fetishes are an endless rainbow of colorful preferences and practices. The strict definition of a fetish is that the subject of the desire is not intrinsically sexual, but comes to drive a person’s arousal, fantasies, and sexual preferences. They appear to develop more in adulthood, perhaps after people have had the opportunity of exploring what they like and do not like. However, some fetishes appear to have an early onset, particularly in males. Because the subject of the fetish is not intrinsically sexual, fetishes are a preference that we acquire through learned experience.
As mentioned, fetishes also have a negative connotation amongst some people. Often, fetishes are believed to a perversion amongst those who practice or embrace them. However, not only medical and behavioral sciences, but also history says otherwise. The origins of the word perversion come to describe the deviants from religion or atheists. A pervert was believed to be person who would not ascribe to the rules nor follow the morals dictated by the church, often referred as debauched or seduced. The word pervert also contains the suffix “vert,” meaning to turn. Thus, a pervert was someone who deviated astray from the righteous course of the lord. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the term came to prominence during the Victorian era, which has a bit of a reputation for sexual prudishness.
Often, we are quick to judge something we not understand or have experienced. Even worse when it comes to sex stuff, we often believe that most things we don’t do are weird, wrong, or even disgusting. It does not take a bright mind to realize that each of our experience and knowledge is and will always be biased and limited.
The view of fetishes as perversions framed a lot of the early science describing and detailing fetishes. Fetishes were for a long time medicalized as sexual abnormalities. To this day, some fetishes are still in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM), a tool used by psychiatrists and psychologist to help diagnose mental disorders, as paraphilic disorders. However, now most mental health professionals only consider fetishes to be harmful if they cause distress to the person, or distress or harm to another person.
We are now beginning to understand how some fetishes develop. As mentioned earlier, learned experiences seem to be one of the main drivers in developing fetishes. Several studies and case reports suggest that two types of learning tend to shape the formation of fetishes: 1) early imprinting, and 2) Pavlovian conditioning, by the fetishized object or action being paired with sexual gratification.
Based on principles of learning, fetishes are believed to be the product of early and rewarding sexual experiences being associated with other objects, practices, or particular areas of the body that are not necessarily sexual. Pavlovian conditioning describes how a neutral stimulus like a type of fabric such as leather can become arousing if it is paired repetitively with rewarding aspect of sex. How fast it occurs, how long it last, how strong is the response, etc, are all aspects that vary from the very genetic makeup of the person, to the contingencies, and the context. That’s one of the reasons why different people have different fetishes. That’s why certain contexts that are associated with sex, usually any vacation destination, are often associated with pleasant feelings since the context is different, modulating how people perceive their surroundings as oppose to what there are used to, like their own bedroom.
As for early imprinting, there are a few interesting points to note. We know from animal studies that sexual preferences are heavily influenced by early experiences. One of the best examples of imprinting comes from a study in which new-born goats and sheep were fostered by a mother sheep or goat (ewes and nannies, to use the correct terms). Goats were mothered by sheep, and the sheep mothered by goats. The researchers then looked at the sexual preferences of these animals once they reached adulthood. The male goats and sheep had sexual preferences for females of the opposite species, meaning the same species as their mothers. I guess Freud was on to something after all. Females on the other hand were more fluid in their choices and were willing to have sex with males of both species. Not only does this study show the effect of early imprinting, but it also hints at an interesting sex difference in how this imprinting affected the animals with the males being more effected by the imprinting. This may shine some light on sex differences in human fetishes, as men with fetishes tend to vastly outnumber women with fetishes.
The ability of experience to shape the development of fetishes means that there is a lot of space unique fetishes and preferences to develop. Despite that, we seem to see that a few fetishes are quite common across people. Foot fetishes are one of the most common fetishes that people report. One potential reason for this is that the brain region where our sensory and motor information of feet is represented is really close to the region where the genitals are represented. Because they are close to each other, it is quite possible that foreplay, including feet rubbing or sucking, and sexual stimulation could potentially establish neural connections between these two regions more easily than other parts of our body.
The Good
If practiced with care and conscientiousness, any practice or object introduced to one’s sex life can have two outcomes: either you like it or not. Both can be seen as good; one as the positive feeling of discovering something you enjoy, and the other as the good feeling of knowing you tried something despite of not being your favorite, even if it is to never be tried again. Yes, things can go wrong, but we don’t stop going to work because we had a bad day, or stop a soccer match because we didn’t score the goal.
Fetishes have the potential of enhancing or expanding the repertoire of sensations we experience during sex. In fact, experimental data shows that animals sexual performance can be modulated by fetish-like cues—such as wearing a tethering jacket—only when their previous sexual experiences they wore that jacket. Namely, they were not able to perform sexually nor ejaculate when they did not have the jacket they always had previously, unlike those who wore only that time.
Perhaps, you may believe you don’t have any fetish. Well, it is never too late to give it a try. Here is to you trying something new the next time! How would you know what may be your fetish? This may resemble when a therapist would ask their patience what they would like to talk about. There is no right or wrong topic to start with, only the one the mind may desire to prioritize.
If there is consent and respect, it really doesn’t matter what you do between the bedsheets, or on the kitchen table, etc., etc., etc.
The Bad
Fetishes, just like any other thing in life, can be taken to an extreme or point where things may be “a little too much.” Fetishes may not only be preferred, but also needed in the expression of sexual arousal, which can impair the preferred “normal” pattern of arousal or performance. Things are good when the fetish adds to the excitement and the desire, but when your sexual life is dependent on it things can become a little bit more difficult.
A fetish disorder is characterised by the expression of two main criteria: A) recurrent and intense sexual arousal from either the use objects or highly specific body part(s) that are not genitalia manifested by fantasies, urges, or behaviors, B) which can cause great distress or impairment of their intimacy, social, occupational life. The main difference between a simple fetish and a fetish disorder lies on the negative impact on the person’s life.
Some fetishes are particularly troubling, like exhibitionism or frotteursism. These fetishes involve revealing oneself or rubbing against non-consenting individuals. These fetishes may come to be through learning as we described earlier and the good news is that when you learn something you can change the learning with different techniques. However, these fetishes can be somewhat resistant to behavioural change and the truly negative consequences that occur because of these actions. Furthermore, these paraphilias appear to be associated to other underlying mental health conditions particularly related to the behaviors individuals choose when approach another person they may feel attracted sexually.
As previously mentioned, if by some reason we can establish associations that can drive our arousal through learning experiences, research has also shown that these associations can be extinguished. Through a process called extinction, researchers have demonstrated that by presenting the object of fetish without the rewarding aspect of sex the level of arousability that the fetish cue used to predict would not anymore. Nevertheless, this process can be quite slow, resistant, and susceptible of being triggered only by the pass of time. This seems to be the case since it has been shown that extinction is not the removal or forgetting of memories, but the creation of new associations of the action and non-rewarding outcomes.
The Ugly
Unlike the mainstream understanding of what “the ugly” constitutes, we believe there is beauty in fetishism. For us, it is like looking inside oneself to those things we do not like about ourselves, things we deny or hide from everyone including society, perhaps to not show to anyone ever. However, beyond what can rather objectively unhealthy be psychologically & physically, embracing who we truly are is not an easy thing to do, but it is all we have.
Questioning who and what we are, especially when it comes to compare ourselves with others, often makes us think of what is normal. This is a question professional still ask themselves. The concept of normality is understood in different ways. The most accepted notion is the one that defines the “limits of normality” within what appears to be more frequent, average, typical, or healthy. But, at some point not living your sexual life to the fullest can become unhealthy. Another related way to see normality is a measure of what is common in the natural kingdom. Namely, if other animals do it, it is natural, especially when animals similar to us do it. We already told you about the goats and sheep, but there is a growing body of studies that show that rats develop preferences that resemble fetishes in humans. In one of Gonzalo’s Ph.D studies, he put a little Velcro jacket on female rats. The male rats had several bouts of sex with these females, and as a result of this conditioning the male rats had developed a strong preference for females who wore the jacket compared to females with no jacket. Funnily enough, when the males wear the jacket and have sex, once you take their jacket away they have difficulty becoming aroused and have much less sex compared to when they are wearing the jacket.
There is no exact definition of what constitute as normal, nor of what is abnormal; nor healthy or unhealthy. These definitions are highly dependent of the context (historical time and culture). Thus, now after our understanding of sex and sexuality have gone through hell and worse, we can see clearly how many stereotypes and ill pre-conceptions we have about so many things, including fetishes.
It is our vision that all people express their sexuality and embrace it without the weight of any stereotype or ‘normal’ standard to live by. You only live once, and life is too short to not make the best out of it, especially when it comes to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh and how these can be enhances or more fun when we include fetishes in the formula.