fet⋅ish [fet-ish, fee-tish]
| 1. | an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency. |
| 2. | any object, idea, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect, or devotion: to make a fetish of high grades. |
| 3. | Psychology. any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation. |
1605–15; earlier fateish < Pg feitiço charm, sorcery (n.), artificial (adj.) < L factīcius factitious; r. fatisso, fetisso < Pg, as above
Related forms:
1. talisman, amulet.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
fetish
“In certain perversions of the sexual instinct, the person, part of the body, or particular object belonging to the person by whom the impulse is excited, is called the fetish of the patient.” [E. Morselli in "Baldwin Dictionary of Philosophy," 1901]
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
Fetishes and fetishists are usually the subject of ridicule and scorn in popular society even though the majority of people have fetishes. I suppose all the derision comes from repressed individuals who are in denial of their natures. When the subject of fetishes is treated in the mainstream, they are always regarded as weird at best or sociopathic at worst. Indeed, some fetishes can be weird and some can be very dangerous to the object, usually a person, being fetishized. However, I believe these are extreme expressions and the vast majority of fetishes are harmless.
While I do not believe all fetishes are inherently sexual I do believe they are inherently sensual in that all the natural senses are gratified by the contact with it. This interview from The Onion’s A.V. Club with burlesque beauty Dita Von Teese also discusses the fascinating subject of fetish as well.
I wonder if the majority of people really do have fetishes. Or perhaps there are two different things at work under the same heading: The occasional foray into some sort of kinky, not-obviously-about-f***ing sexual behavior as foreplay or titilation is one thing. But then there are people for whom this obsessive activity or ritual is the necessary quality of sexual satisfaction.
I don’t know if there’s a scale and those represent the extremes of it. Or if there are two different things going on. I suspect the latter, though.
Whether a fetish is dangerous or not to the object has nothing to do with the intensity of it in the fetishists. One who has only a mild sexual interest in, say, making love to someone and then killing and eating them, is a lot more scary than someone with an uncontrollable fixation for women in furs.
ALL fetishes are “weird.” Any attempt to divide them into “normal” and “weird” ones is subjective and doomed to fail. Society has normalized some (breasts, asses) and left others out in the cold (navels, feet). A person who has one fetish (in the deep, obsessivesense) finds all the rest of them just as cold or repulsive as a person with no fetishes does.
Any fetish, however, is a risk to the fetishist, as its exposure will bring him (or her) deep humiliation and probably destruction of marriage and family ties and loss of a job. That’s a damn shame.
What society always overlooks is that the measure of character is not the desires in your head, but the way you choose to live with them.
I agree for the most part. However, as far as navels and feet, I find some exceptions. These are all ostensibly non-sexual, but, navel jewelry (including piercings) and tattoos have become increasingly popular. Mostly among women and so by drawing attention to it, this will become a sexualized body part.
As far as feet, again, the exception among laymen is intricately tied up with shoe fetish. It is seen as one in the same even though it is not. Nonetheless, a woman obsessed with shoes is seen as harmless even as she’s disparaged as being too materialistic.
There are two different things going on, like you said and as I said in my post. I speak from a place of experience with regard to fetishes; I have fetishes that are sexual and ones that are non-sexual. I know quite a few people who are fetishists and work with fetishes with clients.
Well now you know another one. Navel rings and belly tats may be a fetish unto themselves someday, but they are not part of a focused navel fetish: They represent the destruction and disguise of the fetishized object. They are its antithesis. At best, they are gilding on the lily that needs none.
A navel-piercing fetish would be a development of post-1990s sexuality. As would a fetish among women for being pierced there (this probably extends older fetishes for self-mutilation, etc.). Navel fetishes would be much older in origin. The moment of erotic transition for navels was in the mid-1960s, when it became acceptable — but very daring — for women to show them in public. When some quality or object is capable of being identified as a gender-marker, with even a whiff of sexuality, it is available for fetishization.
The women I have known with genuine navel (self-)fetishes are the ones you’d be least likely to see bare-bellied in public; it is too intense and sexual for them to exhibit themselves that way. That, I think, is where you can see the difference between the casual, weekend, thrillseeker fetishist and the compulsive and inescapable sexual obsession. (As for piercing, they wouldn’t dream of it.)
Feet are not one of mine, but the variety there is almost endless: heels, toes, dirty feet, sneakers, women taking off/putting on shoes, boots, dangling shoes, crush, trampling, etc., etc. They are not the same. A foot fetishist will be frustrated by a picture of lovely peds in stiletto heels, while the stiletto fetishist will swoon over it.
“Fetish” is a word many people who fancy themselves as daring like to claim as part of their world. Like a tattoo. That’s fine. But there’s also a real thing that can get lodged in your brain and ramp up and warp your sex drive. It’s a blessing and a curse, but you can’t choose not to have it. It is a lifelong challenge to live decently with it. It leaves you ripe for exploitation and humiliation with every waking breath you take. I don’t think most people would choose that, if they had the choice and really thought about it. It seems to me two different words are needed here, but that’s the case in many situations.
The difference is, the first group are capable of seeing and feeling some degree of eroticism in the situation; the second are incapable of NOT feeling it.
It’s the difference between being good at math and being Rain Man.
I think that is why the “normal” world is so harsh on it. There is a recognition of the vulnerability in this obsession.
It’s always good to meet new fetishists. And I agree with your statements. As far as the foot-shoe connection, I knew one guy who had a foot fetish for the feet of ballerinas. Specifically those who had spent years in pointe shoes, making their feet blistered, calloused, etc. While he didn’t have a fetish for the pointe shoes, he did like to see the feet go in and out of them and he… appreciated the shoes for their role in making the feet as they were. That is why I feel that sometimes the two can be connected or at least play off each other.
Re: needing a new word. I think “aficionado” may be appropriate. It’s a little more intense than a typical fan, but isn’t obsessive. Yet.
Yes, that reminds me of the ancient Chinese “foot-binding” fetish, in which the diminutive shoe and the deformed foot merged into a single fetish. It is certainly one of the most ancient fetishes on record. It also is one of the most cruel and crippling to the (human) object.
Psychiatrists, who generally do a terrible job of defining and understanding fetishism (they deform it like a bound foot in shoehorning it into their preconcieved ideologies) have gone the opposite direction and coined the word “paraphilia” for the sort of fetish desires that predominate in a person’s sexuality and become major psychological motivations in his or her life. That leaves “fetish” to the merely casually kinky.
An insightful book on fetishes generally, and an exception to the observation that psychologists just don’t get it, is “Female Perversions” by Louise Kaplan. Another one who got onto the right path was the late Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University, with whome I had the honor to correspond on the topic.
Thank you for the book recommendations!
Speaking of psychologists and “not getting it”, did you hear about the movement a couple months ago (it may have been before the New Year, if memory serves me correctly) to get the APA to change their approach with respect to BDSM and fetish? It obviously won’t change overnight but perhaps there’s a chance that we’re headed that way.
There used to be an online list called “Kink Aware Professionals” (doctors, lawyers, shrinks, etc. who were kink-sympathetic) but at last I checked, it was defunct. That was about three years ago. Too bad.
No, I had not heard of that. Part of me hopes that psychologists (including relationship counselors, etc.) will get clued in to these conditions, so they will at least be aware of what some of their patients are dealing with.
And part of me sort of hopes they never do, because they’re bound to f*** it up with rigid professional dogmas, airy PC ideologies, and academic rivalries over commas and semicolons.
Then again, so many of the pioneers of the profession were themselves perverts. When it comes to labels I prefer the old ones, like “pervert” and take a clue from gay people in reclaiming insults and turning them into badges.
“Kink” is a good word, too. It implies something twisted but not broken.
But that still leaves me thinking there’s a need for a demarcation between, on the one hand, people who have found some comfort in expressing themselves erotically in certain fetish communities, and, on the other, people whose entire sexuality is locked into an erotic ritual scene, compulsively fantasized or repeated.
Which may sound like a trap, but if I’m right in my guess, these “four-quarter” fetishes often are not sexual cages, but rather survival strategies for damaged or thwarted libidos.
One interesting sidelight is that there seems to be a gay version of every straight fetish. Whatever the mechanism of fetish, it goes deeper than gay and straight.
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