Part One: What Is a Fetish and Who Has One?
A fetish is one of the most common features of adult erotic life, with nearly two-thirds of men acknowledging some kind of kinky arousal pattern. Fetishism is also one of the most misunderstood, most pathologized behaviors in popular culture, and the most likely kink to make a person feel alone in their own skin.
Fetish Is Not the Problem: Shame Is the Problem
Fetish itself, unless wrapped up in a personality disorder, is not problematic. But fetishists who are massively burdened with shame, guilt, or emotional dysregulation are as likely as non-kinky people to have unhealthy compulsions. It is, of course, the enormous anxiety and stress around the fetish that can make a small number of people act out in anti-social ways. That said, according to studies, among men who self-admit to fetishes, fewer than 2% of them feel disturbed by their desires. The vast majority are not bothered by their kinks.
What is noteworthy is that the “fewer than 2%” are most likely to seek out therapists and psychiatrists. That sampling problem may explain why psychiatry was so slow to acknowledge the facts about human sexual behavior. Clinicians saw only the distressed minority and built their theories on that drift. From the 1880s to the 1970s, they assumed kink and fetish were mental illness. Then the science turned against their ill-conceived sex theories.
In decades of clinical practice with hundreds of fetishists, I have watched the same pattern play out. A perfectly functional adult walks in carrying a private erotic interest. Since adolescence, they felt freakish, broken, perhaps even mentally ill to be so “abnormal.” They had no idea their interests are actually known, sometimes common (like foot fetishes). They were wounded by their shame at not being normal men.
My Clinical Observations
Most of the patients who walk through my door for fetish counseling are men. That is partly because men carry shame more heavily in our culture. They are supposed to be “manly,” and that doesn’t seem to include kissing women’s feet. Femdoms know better, but the general population squirms at the thought.
Women have fetishes too, but for patriarchal reasons, they seldom appear in fetish studies or books. As a Scene person for decades, though, I’ve known thousands of fetishistic women. Bondage fetishists, body mod lovers, leather, lace, and latex lovers, adult babies, it’s literally endless. Scroll any sex-work site, and you’ll find scores of women who offer menus of fetish delights and enjoy role-playing them.
Women generally don’t seem to suffer over their kinks the way men do. Even the female ABs I have worked with act spunkier and less self-flagellating than their male counterparts. The cultural pressure on male sexuality to look one specific way crushes men in a way it doesn’t crush women, and the consulting room is one of the places you can see that pressure clearest.
Every Adult Sex Act that Harms None Is Normal
In truth, normality has always INCLUDED THEM. Or should I say “included US.”
In world culture, each and every one of us whose sexual choices don’t conform to the social mold can feel undesirable, unwholesome, and unlikely to find the right partner in life who will fully accept us. It is a pain that cuts deeply into the human brain, and for simple reasons.
Brains like sex. Brains push humans to have orgasms. Orgasms improve overall human health. (Something I talk about at length in Vol. I of the Truth About Sex.) So on one hand you have our natural biology encouraging, even cruelly forcing us to give in to pleasure because it is necessary for psychobiological stability; and on the other, you have a world full of ignorant people telling us that sex is dirty and that kink is sinful.
Coming this Thursday, the series continues with Fetish 102! The data on fetish prevalence is clear. The clinical picture is clearer. The shame is the wound, not the desire.
photo credit Femme Spirit @ unSplash
Pick up my mini-books while you’re here. You never know what you might learn.
