Although the jet lag lingers, I can finally say I am back to work and ready for the next project.
What’s that, you ask? It’s Fetish Uncensored.
Fetish Uncensored, the Book
As some of you may have noticed, the fetish blog series has disappeared from the site. As I told you during the series, it was always meant to be time-limited. Those of you who followed it closely may have even downloaded it, which is fine. Enjoy!
What you didn’t know was that my ongoing problems with censorship imposed by the corporate takeover of the Internet have kept me vigilant about algorithms and ever-changing social media rules, particularly on Meta and X. That concern kept me from sharing content that was more intense than the polite versions I wrote.
I’m now going to undertake a more comprehensive and edgier version in an eBook (PDF) of the type you’ve seen in The Pleasure Literature Emporium. I have case studies I want to share and clinical observations that give a deeper and at times darker view into the complexity of fetish and the amazing diversity of the people who have them.
A Book Is A Haven For Independent Thinkers
A public blog lives on a platform, and platforms have limits. LinkedIn still censors doctors in reproductive medicine. Meta won’t let you admit sex is fun. You may think you are following the terms of service only to realize their lawyers deliberately left holes in the rules that could always be twisted to the company’s favor. Then you may lose a post or an account. Almost all of my kinky friends have dealt with that.
A book lives outside of corporate algorithm. Nobody flags a case study because it’s too honest for an advertiser’s comfort. Readers who buy the book have already said yes to adult content, written for adults, with no filter standing between us. I have spent thirty years treating fetishists with real, sometimes explicit case material. Most of that material has nowhere to go online anymore. So I’m embracing mini-books as a better way to keep educating and healing.
Gloria Uncensored
Since 1992, when I first submitted the manuscript of Different Loving to the publishers, I’ve dealt with censorship. Chapters were slashed out of Different Loving. I even had to warn readers not to do what people in the book loved doing (and we loved them for it!). After years of “we can’t publish a dominatrix” feedback from the same big houses that continue to earn money from my books, I decided to self-publish. It was better than being entirely silenced.
I’m devoted to my professional mission of providing adult education on sex as a way to end the misery, shame, guilt, and depression that has haunted millions of adults who navigate their way through desires, often without contact with other kinky people, much less community.
I want to write more about what fetishists actually experience, not the sanitized versions. It feels important to share my clinical observations, not only for the adult reader but for colleagues and scholars who will continue to do the work of normalizing sexual diversity and celebrating one of the most fundamental gifts of being human, our capacity for emotional ecstasy and bodily pleasure. I need to share case studies that bean-counters find too edgy for their customers, studies which actually open doors to self-enlightenment for people like us.
I Can Help
If you read the series and felt something crack open in you, that reaction was information. Shame convinces people that the fetish itself is the problem. One mission of my blog series was to help people like you understand that your desire was never the problem: the real problem is the rejection and judgment you’ve received from others over the course of your life.
Perhaps you have come to believe over years that having a fetish or kink is what’s “wrong” with you. It isn’t. All the scientific studies I quoted reached the same conclusion. What’s wrong is that you have been hearing – from culture, perhaps your friends, often your partners or spouses – that you’re sick for having kinks.
Yet, on one level, you likely accept that your fetish is actually a small place of joy for you. It’s your highest form of erotic happiness, and you can’t give it up. On another level, you hold it inside like a painful secret, believing it is the cause of all your interpersonal problems. Almost 80% of the kinky clients I’ve worked with ask the same question of me when we begin therapy: “Can you cure my kinkiness?”
Compassion is the Cure
There is no cure for fetishes or BDSM needs. Only self-acceptance and making the best possible choices for your specific situation can drag you out of the morass of confusion and sorrow.
Since writing the blog, I’ve had nearly a daily stream of email from precisely that audience: adults who have lived with their secrets for decades. Some had terrible results when they revealed their needs to partners. Others had been living in self-imposed silence, often choosing not to partner, as a coping mechanism. Self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and your commitment to finding a better path are the only cure.
My office door is now open after a 3-week hiatus. If you are struggling with fetish or kink urges, contact me, and we’ll set up a discovery call to see if a little therapy can get you to a much better place with yourself.
