Various explanations have been put forth for the rarity of female fetishists. In one unusual case, an anterior temporal lobectomy relieved an epileptic man's fetish for safety pins. Ramachandran observed that the region processing sensory input from the feet lies immediately next to the region processing genital stimulation, and suggested an accidental link between these regions could explain the prevalence of foot fetishism. Neurological differences may play a role in some cases. Imprinting seems to occur during the child's earliest experiences with arousal and desire, and is based on "an egocentric evaluation of salient reward- or pleasure-related characteristics that differ from one individual to another." Fetishism could result when a child is imprinted with an overly narrow or incorrect concept of a sex object. Theories of sexual imprinting propose that humans learn to recognize sexually desirable features and activities during childhood. He suggests that conditioning combines with some other factor, such as an abnormality in the sexual learning process. According to John Bancroft, conditioning alone cannot explain fetishism, because it does not result in fetishism for most people.
In several experiments, men have been conditioned to show arousal to stimuli like boots, geometric shapes or penny jars by pairing these cues with conventional erotica. Some explanations invoke classical conditioning. No single cause for fetishism has been conclusively established. The sensory regions for the feet and genitals lie next to each other, as shown in this cortical homunculus.įetishism usually becomes evident during puberty, and may develop prior to that. Devotism is only a sexual fetish when the person who has the fetish considers the amputated body part on another person the object of sexual interest. ĭevotism involves being attracted to body modifications on another person that are the result of amputation. This is dangerous due to the issue of hyperactive pleasure seeking which can result in strangulation when there is no one to help if the device gets too tight and strangles the user. This usually involves a person being connected and strangled by a homemade device that is tight enough to give them pleasure but not tight enough to suffocate them to death.
The fetish also includes an individualized part that involves choking oneself during the act of masturbation, which is known as auto-erotic asphyxiation. Įrotic asphyxiation is the use of choking to increase the pleasure in sex. Less popular object groups focused on headwear, stethoscopes, wristwear, pacifiers, and diapers ( diaper fetishism). Of the groups about clothing, 33% belonged to groups about clothes worn on the legs or buttocks (such as stockings or skirts), 32% about footwear ( shoe fetishism), 12% about underwear ( underwear fetishism), and 9% about whole-body wear such as jackets. Less popular groups focused on navels ( navel fetishism), legs, body hair, mouth, and nails, among other things. Of the groups about body parts or features, 47% belonged to groups about feet ( podophilia), 9% about body fluids (including urophilia, scatophilia, lactaphilia, menophilia, mucophilia), 9% about body size, 7% about hair ( hair fetish), and 5% about muscles ( muscle worship).
Ī 2007 study counted members of Internet discussion groups with the word fetish in their name. In a review of 48 cases of clinical fetishism in 1983, fetishes included clothing (58.3%), rubber and rubber items (22.9%), footwear (14.6%), body parts (14.6%), leather (10.4%), and soft materials or fabrics (6.3%). The ICD-10 definition (World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases) is still limited to non-living objects. Martin Kafka argued that partialism should be merged into fetishism because of overlap between the two conditions, and the DSM-5 subsequently did so in 2013. In 1987, a revised edition of the DSM-III ( DSM-III-R) introduced a new diagnosis for body part arousal, called partialism. The publication of the DSM-III in 1980 changed that by excluding arousal from body parts in its diagnostic criteria for fetishism. Originally, most medical sources defined fetishism as a sexual interest in non-living objects, body parts or secretions. Paraphilias such as urophilia, necrophilia and coprophilia have been described as fetishes. This broader usage of fetish covers parts or features of the body (including obesity and body modifications), objects, situations and activities (such as smoking or BDSM). In common parlance, the word fetish is used to refer to any sexually arousing stimuli, not all of which meet the medical criteria for fetishism.