Wow, what an awkward thread title. Sorry, all. Here’s what I mean by it.
Is it only men who fetishize body parts that are not part of the normal human complement of primary or secondary sexual characteristics? Like feet, for example. I’m not talking about someone really liking an attractive foot as part of a total body package, I’m talking about someone for whom the foot is the sole (ha-ha) or at least overwhelmingly principal sexual attractant. Someone who spends hours masturbating to pictures of feet and doesn’t care much of anything about the rest of the person in any sexual sense.
Granted, I don’t spend a lot of time researching this - that’s what the Dope is for. I’ve just never heard of women having this sort of fetish exclusivity. Sure, we all have our interests. I personally really like strong forearms and hands with a medium amount of blonde or red hair on them, but it doesn’t fill my fantasies - it’s just a nice bonus.
On one hand I’ve got to agree with you, but females do seem to like having different parts of their bodies played with in a sexual manner. Back or foot rubs, ear or neck nibbling etc. Guys mostly just want their cocks played with.
On the other hand I’m a guy so it may just be that females don’t advertise or tell me about their weird desires.
One point to remeber when thinking about such things: The female body is a triumph of beauty and form, the male body is mostly laughable.
Now I’m surprised to hear this from a UK-er, where insults like “cow,” “cunt” and “tit” are used (unless these were all invented by the BBC Foreign Distribution Dept.), while in the US we’ll call a guy a “pussy,” but not to disparage that body part itself, but rather to equate the guy with the pussy’s traditionally weaker owner. Or we’‘ll call a woman a "bitch,’ which many women consider a badge of honor as they overturn the connotation of being weaker for having a pussy.
(Warning: broad essentialist sex stereotypes ahead)
Fetishism (and probably pornography) is trickier for women, because sex is not so narrowly focused or object-oriented for them. It’s more of a combination of sensual, social and atmospheric stimuli.
OTOH, most porn for men, fetish-oriented or not, is all-or-nothing, all about long boring closeups of one body part or the other. If the people who made this stuff ran restaurants, you would ask for ketchup and be expected to chug an entire bottle with your burger. If there was a burger.
I think* men are perhaps a bit better at doing the worshiping, and women are more accustomed to being worshipped. So if we’re talking feet/shoes, men are more likely to externalize it and do the worshipping, and women are more likely to internalize it, and get off on their feet/shoes being worshipped.
Fetish, either way. Men are more external, women are more internal.
*gross generalizations, YMMV, Dopers are as a group, completely atypical, all the usual caveats, etc.
Disagreed. Man bodies are beautiful too! Polerius you beat me to it. Seeing Michelangelo’s David was one of those punch-in-the-gut moments where you realize how freaking gorgeous human beings really are.
As to the OP, gosh, I love feet and all, but more because they’re cute and have wiggly toes than because they make me hot. I can’t imagine a sexual experience only involving one part of the body. I can imagine one focusing heavily on one part–but having it be the sole object of interest, rather than part of the whole package? Baffling.
I think the topics of sexuality and gender are so complicated that just because female-related terms are used in a derogatory fashion doesn’t mean that the worship of the female form is necessarily impinged upon. It’s possible for there to exist in a society elements that degrade women and that worship them, sometimes simultaneously. In fact, the things that make women “inferior” are sometimes the very things that are worshipped or make women feminine (lesser physical strength/“delicateness”, higher voices, smaller/childlike physical stature, etc.). I bet if you asked all those guys from UK who toss around “cow,” “cunt,” and “tit” as insults if they found women’s bodies superior to men’s when it comes to beauty, they’d say yes.
Why? Because inconsistency is human in a big bad way.
I’m with Beware of Doug on why fetishes occur less frequently among women than men. Of course, human diversity being what it was, I would be surprised if there weren’t women who have fetishes in the sense the OP is talking about.
I’m also with the posters who think men’s bodies are beautiful, just 'cuz they are.