Tell ya why I ask. Being a regular reader of SomethingAwful I am naturally exposed to their Awful Link of the Day. When the ALOD isn’t about furries, eye-wrenching web design, conspiracy nuts, neo-religious whackjobs or political diatribes, it’s about some kind of bizarre fetish site. I almost never click on the links lest my my IQ drop by osmosis or my retinas burn with some horrible image I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing never existed. Just the same I like reading SA’s lead-ins to these ALODs.
What has struck me about their fetish ALODs though is that it seems like just about every one of the bizarre fetishes were cooked up by guys. Whether it’s physical fetishes like inflationism, extreme musculature, gigantism/dwarfism, anthropomorphism, or just weird situational fetishes like women stuck in the mud or getting their pantyhose snagged or sneezing, the objects of these fetishes seem always to be women and, it obviously follows, those who engage in the fetish are men. Now it’s not like I expect SA to be even-handed in their dispensation of fetish sites in order to represent an accurate cross-section of mankind’s sexual proclivities, but in considering things beyond the scope of SA without actually doing any physical research (you try googling for scholarly papers on fetishes without being assaulted with three billion NSFW results!) it just seemed to me that women, on the whole, just aren’t nearly as … um … creative* as men in their sexual fantasies.
I say this based on a few generally accepted (or at least believed) concepts:
Women tend to be more discreet in their discussions of sex. That’s not to say less explicit, just that they tend to be pickier about what they tell and who they tell it to, and that they are usually not as prone as men are to talking about it just to be boastful.
Women appear to be less likely to take sexual fantasies to the same kind of extremes as men, perhaps due to the idea that men’s fantasies are coloured by testosterone. This is not to imply women aren’t kinky, but that the furthest you really ever see a woman take it is the extreme edge of BDSM, which includes scat/bukakke – which is really more about ultimate control/submission as aphrodesiac or catharsis.
Men tend to sexualize more things more than women. (This may or may not be true, but men at least tend to be more obvious about it) From this line of thought is born the sexualization of non-sexual body parts – feet, ears, noses, etc. – that you really don’t see women sexualizing.
Now, I may be off base on some or all of this so feel free to correct me, but based largely on the above comes the question: Do women have fetishes that could be considered as strange as some men’s, and we just don’t hear about it? Are there women out there who would get off seeing a guy sneeze or scratch his pits?
Not that I’m looking for such – I’m quite happy in my comfortable vanilla sex world – but in the sexual arena where, let’s face it, women have the advantage of being able to use our own testosterone against us, it just strikes me as interesting that men can reach such extremes of sexual strangeness on a level wildly askew from women.
I think women fantasize about a lot more kinky things than they generally admit to. Our culture is that men like ‘nasty’ and women are into ‘romance’ so women are a lot less likely to confess or express desires that society might condemn as ‘disgusting’. ‘The Secret Garden’ by Nancy Friday is a pretty interesting read; it’s supposedly a compilation of women’s fantasies, and there is all that slash/porn/erotic on the internet, mostly written by women. There probably are certain fetishes that appeal to more men, and some that appeal to more women.
Women also get a lot of fetish stuff in the mainstream.
A woman can dress in mens clothing without being thought of as a cross dresser. She could wear a much wider range of clothing without being thought of as outside the mainstream. Maybe thid helps reduce the occurance of extreme feshistic behaviour in women?
I was going to mention slash fiction. Definitely a mostly female phenomenon.
I’ve heard it claimed that the primary consumers of gay porn are actually straight women. I don’t know how true that is, but when you consider how many men are turned on by lesbianism, it isn’t really that surprising.
In my limited experience, women seem to get off on control or wilder-than-vanilla sex fantasies, but I really don’t know any female version of fetishes, per se. I’m talking about the equivalent of spike-heel crushers, diaper-wearers, or the like. They’ll play it out for money for the guys who dig it, but it doesn’t trip their trigger. I’m sure someone will be along shortly to correct me.
In my experience (which spans several decades), women have no trouble keeping up with men’s fetishism, but of course it manifests itself differently. In straight interactions, probably 95% of the women are “tops,” and 95% of the men are “bottoms.” Most of this is about control and humiliation and sometimes the infliction of pain.
What most people don’t realize is that there are ***huge ***numbers of heterosexual men who are into (submissive and humiliating) crossdressing during sex. Look at any of the alternative web sites, and you’ll be amazed at the personal ads and profiles from guys who are married, but “can’t express themselves” with their wives. For obvious reasons, there are very few women who feel the need to crossdress.
Among gay people, the Leather community has become virtually mainstream, depending on where you want to draw the line between “mainstream” and “bizarre.” Even relatively “vanilla” guys might incorporate some of the trappings of fetishism, if not the behavior. And by the way, it’s pretty much the same among lesbians.
But the thing is that the fetishes I see women engage in are, by modern standards anyway, fairly mainstream. BDSM is common enough that it is generally accepted even if it is anathema to most people. Female cross-dressing – is that even possible? With the exception of role-reversals via strap-ons (in both straight and lesbian encounters) women have the luxury of pretty much being able to dress any which way they want in public without being thought to look strange. A woman in a dress is just as common a sight as a woman in a black pinstripe Armani. But, if we could assume for a moment that society wouldn’t think it strange for a woman to be into the same kind of off-the-wall fetishes some guys are into, would they have fettishes that are equally as off-the-wall, even if they were to manifest themselves in ways that were more attuned to the female sexual psyche?
BDSM is not a fetish, it is a paraphilia. Basically, fetishes revolve around body parts or objects, while paraphilia refers to sexual practices that are viewed as abnormal. Fetishes are included under paraphilias as is BDSM, pedophilia, etc. The vast majority of people who have fetishes are males as is most people who have paraphiles. We don’t know right now if this is due to culture or biological factors. No fetishes/paraphilias have been officially documented in animals.
Semantics aside, the bolding here is basically the crux of my question: Is it a predominantly male proclivity? Your post says yes, it is, but that whether it is societal or biological (specifically neurological) in nature remains in question; is the male brain, or perhaps the chemicals (testosterone mostly) that control its sexual preferences responsible for some men going further afield for sexual gratifications in inconventional ways? And, by the same token, does estrogen make it less likely that women would do the same, or at least go as far out? Or is it simply that one’s sexual identity, as dictated in part by these chemicals, is a determining factor in their personal interpretation of what sex means, and that this personal definition shapes one’s vision of desirable sexual practises?
Women don’t talk about it. We’ve been trained since birth, many of us that girls are demure, proper, and conservative. We’re supposed to want vanilla sex all the way. It’s hard enough for most of us to break out of that, forget going to extreme fetishes.
I heartily believe that the supposed increase in women’s libido in their 30’s is just a product of finally, completely breaking out of one’s shell in those ages.
Right now, we simply don’t know enough about human sexuality to say for sure if this is a biological or sociological condition.
When I studied this subject in school, they told me that the reason that men tend to have fetishes more often than female is because they are visual creatures when it comes to sexuality. They said that the reason men look at porn and women read novels is due to this fact. However, I am of the opinion that this is more socially based than biological. Romance novels, stories, aren’t viewed as dirty by our society so women are more inclined to produce and consume that type of porn. There was a small study done where they were able to get 5 out of 7 men to respond sexually to shoes after showing them the shoes interspersed with porn. When they attempted to reproduce this study with females, they weren’t successful. However, this study had a very small sample size, so I don’t think we can consider it prove one way or another.
I also think one of the reasons why more males are reported with paraphilias than females is that more males will need to seek treatment. A female into BDSM will have an easier time of convincing her mate to play along than will a male. A female transvestite? Well, I think we all know how differently society views a woman in man’s clothes versus a man in woman’s clothing.
This isn’t to say that I don’t think there could be a biological component as well. No one really knows what causes paraphilias to develop in the first place and the overwhelming male numbers seem to suggest a slight biological cause (at least for some).
If it were testosterone, then ftm transsexuals would report more abnormal sexual desires after they begin HRT and mtfs would experience less. This is not the case however, which suggests that if it is biological, it is due to wiring more than sex hormones. Although antiandrogens are used to treat some people with paraphilias, this only lowers the sex drive in general. Men with paraphilias do not have testosterone levels any higher than men without. (cite)
I’m going to disagree with the OP. I’m pretty sure that any woman is only about two glasses of wine away from bizarre hot girl-on-girl action. Why yes, I am a Cinemax subscriber, how did you guess?
There’s a huge difference between “kinky” and “fetish”, you know. Women may be just as likely to be interested in sexual behaviors that aren’t considered mainstream, but particular interest in fetishes is a different matter. And it’s certainly something that’s been discussed academically - whether or not women are likely to develop fetishes for particular objects and so forth. I can’t claim any particular familiarity with that research, but from what little I do know it does appear to be the case that men are more likely to develop fetishes. This will be a far more productive discussion if people are willing to make the distinction between “liking sex” or “liking kinky sex” and actually having a sexual fetish.
