Wednesday 8 March 2017

Fetish: perfectly fixed


**Perfectly Fixed**


If you are into any form of kink (itself a not exactly well-defined term), you likely will have used the term ''fetish''. 

Dictionary definitions tell of *sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.* and it gives following synonyms: *fixation, sexual fixation, obsession, compulsion, mania; weakness, fancy, taste, fascination, craze, fad; idée fixe.* Here on FetLife, we can obviously add *a kink* to that list.

Wikipedia defines **sexual fetishism** as sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part but even here we come across difficulties, because what exactly IS a sexual body part (apart from the genitals)? One can argue, for example, that the intense sexual interest in female breasts typical for current western culture is extremely fetishistic and by historical and ethnographic standards it certainly could be seen as such. 


While medical definitions of fetishism and paraphilias emphasise distress caused by such pattern of arousal (either primary, or more often through shame or stigmatisation associated with it), in colloquial speech, *fetish* is used simply for intense sexual interest in anything that isn't ''standard'' sex, or even some very standard sexual acts and objects if enjoyed and/or fixated on with a non-standard intensity. 

I'm not terribly fond of the term fetish or fetishism, because it seems unnecessary to me: we might as well talk about turn-ons (generally) or kinks (if we want to emphasise less-than-normative character of our turn-ons). And yet, occasionally I wonder if the notion of a fetish as a particularly strong and intense arousal associated with a specific object or act isn't worth preserving. 

I was reminded of this a few days ago when watching a movie. Not porn, not erotica and not even a movie with a particularly noticeable romance or attraction plot but a fantastic adventure story with a ''12'' rating. 

The scene I am talking about was cartoon-type fun and less than 30 seconds long, its only part that could be described as graphic maybe a second or two long. And yet I caught myself breathing just a little deeper as I saw the tied hands, the coil of the whip, as I heard its crack, and I caught myself stifling a gasp in that one moment when the shirt on the hero's back was split open, the edges of the split darkened momentarily, his head lolled and his eyes glazed over in a badly-acted expression of agony. 

I had had the same reaction before, but what I realised this time - following a browse through a few YouTube flogging/whipping playlists - was how specific it was, how narrow the space between ''not enough'' and ''too much'' was, how precisely I could pinpoint the ''fetishistic trigger'' to the very specific moment a whip breaks previously-untouched skin in a specific area of back and shoulders, how a welt was not quite enough but flaying off flesh in stripes was too much, which ratio of back to face felt right (roughly 2:1 for shorter scenes), what distance I am looking from, and ideally, what pattern the marks create (this is moving from existing movies to the one I would play in my head) and so on, and so on.

And there is something similar going on in many fetishistic desires, isn't there? The *just-so* factor, where Greek feet are so much hotter than Egyptian ones (or the other way round) for a foot fetishist, where it has to be pale pink Keds, shoulder-blade long, wavy but not curly red hair, a particular angle of a bowed head. It's more set than most turn-ons, more immutable. I am reminded of one the dictionary synonyms for ''fetish'': fixation. Yes, that would be it. 


**On Acts and Feelings**

Quite a few discussions I have recently seen on Fet concerned the subject of fetishistic satisfactions. Of people (OK, men, and specifically, male bottoms, or male submissive bottoms even) looking for a particular *ACT*. And how women (specifically, female tops, and even more so, female dominant tops) have very little to zilch interest in play that is solely about a specific act. I **really** don't want to get here into the topic of male entitlement, selfishness or a complete lack of understanding what female tops might be looking for some male bottoms demonstrate, as this subject has been covered many times. 

What I find really interesting is that there seems to be a big difference in how (most) female tops and (many) male bottoms ''process'' those fetishes, kinks, acts. 

Men -- at least the men that are the most visible, and set the tone of the whole discourse -- seem to look for acts. Women seem to be looking for a certain feeling. And I don't mean the old chestnut of women necessarily wanting more attachment, relationshippy fuzzies, non-sexual and non-kinky stuff in exchange for play. I mean feelings-in-the-moment, for which the acts just make a convenient path to. 

I once had a long list of fetishes, but then I realized that it's pretty pointless. Yes, I do like some ''activities'', and I definitely don't like others. But making such a list is mostly just an invitation for people (OK, men) to try and connect on the basis of these ''activities''. 

And I don't really give a monkey's about the majority of ''activities''. My few fetishistic fixations are all about small acts of great intensity, that only work in a broader context of an extended encounter, a dynamic, a relationship. 

I am not going to arrange a ''face slapping date'' or ''telling you you are mine'' date; a ''touching someone's face in that specific way date'' or a ''blindfold date''. I still have a few specific ''activities'' on my list, but even those are not really things-I-have-to-do. They are much more along the line of fairly (but not perfectly) reliable ways to get the feeling I am after. 

I don't know why it is like that. 

I suspect that the nature of male arousal and the whole sexual response makes it easier for men to associate very specific things with arousal, and then fixate/condition this association into a strong habit by repetition while having sex and masturbating. 

This is likely reinforced by porn and a laundry-list of activities offered by sex workers providing personal services. 

I suspect that men are, in fact, also seeking a specific feeling, but that feeling is very, very reliably associated with a specific act, and thus seeking an act is easier. 

I wondered for a while if it really is a male/female thing or more of a top/bottom thing, and I didn't come to any conclusions. 

I suspect it is a combination of both: bottoms are more likely to look for acts as they are about sensation, and so are men. The latter is very obvious in perfectly vanilla settings where guys seem to become obsessed with things like anal or deep throating for example, to the point of becoming aggressively pushy or deciding to cheat in a monogamous relationships simply to get a particular "thing" done. 

And thus, many male bottoms will sit close to a fetishist-act-central, while many female tops would seek specific feelings that do not necessarily reliably tie to any specific act. 


More on backs here

And more on flogging here




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