[PRBori]

So based on the
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thread content and my ignorance on the topic, I'm wondering....

1. What is a fetish?
2. Do any of you have one and/or know/knew someone that did? If yes, what was it?
3. What triggers such behavior?
4. Is it acceptable in the western culture?
5. Is it normal or is the person considered to have mental issues?
6. Would any of you date someone with a fetish? If yes, what are your limits?
7. If you were a single parent, how would you handle this? What would you consider before involving yourself with someone that has a fetish?
8. Are this fetish mainly towards adults and/or can they flip into children fetishes?

I want to understand this behavior and I simply cannot comprehend it as I've never encounter it before.

[sunitaishot]

I don't believe in mental illness. However, each individual has a unique sexual response, so fetishes fall under that label.

[TheWanderer]

I've always wondered, roughly what percentage of people have fetishes? It seems hard to measure since most people would try to keep theirs a secret. And does this include minor things like liking blondes or british accents?

[plotthickens]

If I understand it correctly, a fetish is an object or act which engenders a sexual response in the individual in question, where the object or act is not specifically sexual in the narrowest definition. That is: penetration is not a fetish, but pubic hair could be.

[FruitLoop]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	[...] but pubic hair could be.

LACK of pubic hair is my fetish lol. Gotta love the laser! Bushy black beaver be gone! Welcome soft white mouse! Yarm!

Technically I think non-sexual items such as a shoe or a hairbrush are fetishes, whereas obviously arousing things, as ahem, mentioned, are not.

[joeleoj]

I believe the criteria is a non-living object which much be present for a person to achieve sexual excitement.

[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by joeleoj To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I believe the criteria is a non-living object which much be present for a person to achieve sexual excitement.

One can fetishize feet; feet are alive.

[joeleoj]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	One can fetishize feet; feet are alive.

Yeah, forgot about that:

"Fetishism is typically operationally described as persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects, an over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexual) body parts (e.g., feet, hands) and body secretions."

[Anhedonic Lake]

It's something that you can have an orgasm to which is listed in the DSM.

[ThingInItsSelf]

My friend once dated a guy who begged her to grow her arm pit hair long because it looked so sexy... they didn't date for long.

[Alberto]

the ascription of a whole to a part?
Fundamentally, it is the invention of new erogenous zones (being such our "default" fetishes?) - inclusive of objects.
An evidence of the ability of human brains to live by metaphors.

It's a figure of
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---------- Post added 06-14-2012 at 04:26 PM ----------

ps by the way, it is oftentimes used to ennoble reviled traits.
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as conducive to illumination as much as Peaceful deities.

Regardless of the fact it may be a neurotical symptom, it can also be (though with less frequency) a creative function.

It reveals in an outstanding manner that we don't live by rational drafts, but by metaphorical ones - so even rationality may seem (or must be) allusive, given this powerful tendency by humans to implement metaphors much more frequently than rationales.

---------- Post added 06-14-2012 at 05:12 PM ----------
For those who may like additional thoughts:

( Show Spoiler )

there would be an eventual elsewhere where the true speech is entertained - all the rest being Platonic shadows releasing hints.

Our logical forms, just like our fetishes, are another instance of our attempts (and yearning) to land there.

The fact a logical figure can be used to manipulate the outer world is immensely deceptive of our inward cognitive processes, though powerful for our technological outward results.

Because by keeping an eye on the outward results, we become oblivious of the fact we don't live uniquely in an outward world - all that vast realm of emotions, prejudices, pulsions, esthetics, dreams, metaphors we continuously use and invent is then neglected, forgotten and ignored despite all its intense problematicness.

The fact a neurological substratum allows (apparently: for some "nuts" say it may rather receive it, like a radio) our pyshcic life, should not make us forget that our psychic life exists nonetheless and that its problems are no less of a problem because a physical substratum supports them.

The fact one may hallucinate does not make hallucinations less meaningful because I can induce them also with a drug, just like the fact we naturally sleep is no less of a natural issue simply because I can also artificially narcotize you.

Is it the neurotransmitter what produces the abstract field/emotions, or is it the abstract field/emotions what releases the adequate neurotransmitter? Or perhaps both may happen? First the hen or the egg?

Why, since we can explain something (very little, actually) under a physical point of view, we forfeit our right and ability to solve the abstract problems that haunt our minds? Isn't the physical neurological substratum there exactly in order to produce such abstract lives?

If I feel something I call soul is damned and that I need to strive to save it, I'd be much more interested in knowing why I think so (addressing the abstract perception on its own abstract grounds) rather than in saying that if I get Prozac I may soon forget all about that.
The answer isn't Prozac.

For an asbtract being knowing why I deem salvation important is a question that needs to be answered in itself - the fact a certain location of neural wires may be producing it and I may make it cease by disrupting them is no answer. Given an adequate amount of destruction I may make anything cease, in fact.
I don't want to know that wires arranged in a given symmetry produce that question - I want rather to answer the question they just asked.

I'd rather assume they were arranged so exactly in order to produce the question, and not the question produced for them to be arranged so.

In fact if we say that a metaphysical question is there just because wires are arranged in a given manner, we end up in this tautology: if the question does not need to be met on its own grounds, it means that the reason physical wires are arranged so in order to produce a given metaphysical question, is that the given metaphysical question is functional for the wires to be aranged in such physical a way.
The question induced by the wires, would therefore exist only in order to align the wires. Which leaves the why totally unanswered (why had the wires such "need" to align themselves so, then?) - arguably, only by answering the abstract why we answer for both the whys.

Of course we may argue that wires are arranged in a totally haphazard manner, and keep realinging themselves producing funny questions (like fetishes and other metaphors) for no real reason but casual ones. They are there and produce random harrowing abstract problems because. It's all about epilepsy. A few consider this answer quintessentially logical - at which point I exclaim: I can do without something that is so logical that it explains everything by explaining nothing.

[Polymath20]

----------Do any of you have one and/or know/knew someone that did? If yes, what was it?

I know lots of people into lots of different things.

----------What triggers such behavior?

Being liberated and confident enough to indulge in your fantasies.

----------Is it acceptable in the western culture?

With the public fascination of things like "50 Shades of Grey" I think that it is one of those "Acceptable, but not in polite company" sort of things.

----------Is it normal or is the person considered to have mental issues?

According to a psychologist or psychiatrist? Maybe not. According to someone with common sense and experience in the arena? There are only a few, more extreme types of behaviors which I would consider indicative of illness (but the fetish itself is not an illness)

Not touching the rest with a 200 foot pole.

[AnnaMolly]

I thought it was only a fetish if you need it to become aroused. Without the fetish, no or only very low sexual excitement.


I know people with certain preferences and kinks, but never someone with a fetish. At least, not that I know of.

[Polymath20]

	Originally Posted by AnnaMolly To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I thought it was only a fetish if you need it to become aroused. Without the fetish, no or only very low sexual excitement. I know people with certain preferences and kinks, but never someone with a fetish. At least, not that I know of.

If you require something for arousal, particularly something deviant, I would call that more of a dysfunction than a fetish.

[joeleoj]

The proposed DSM V designation (The DSM-IV did not include body parts, I don't believe):

Table 1 Proposed DSM-V diagnostic criteria for Fetishism (302.81)
A. Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense, sexually
arousing fantasies, sexual urges and behaviors involving either
the use of non-living objects and/or a highly specific focus on
non-genital body part(s).
B. The fantasies, sexual urges, and behaviors cause clinically
significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other
important areas of functioning.
C. The fetish objects are not limited to articles of clothing used in crossdressing
(as in Transvestic Fetishism) or devices specifically
designed for the purpose of tactile genital stimulation (e.g.,
vibrator).

Specify:
Body part(s):
Non-living object(s):
Other:

Also, fetishes are almost exclusively in the male population.