Normalisation of sexual fetishism

[QuietContraryMary]

Just reading this story about a man with infantilism abusing a child

www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/sick-abuser-nappy-fetish-jailed-15579002

There are NHS doctors such as Dr. Christina Richards (transgender, gender clinic psychologist) who have written books www.amazon.co.uk/Sexuality-Gender-Mental-Health-Professionals/dp/085702843X?tag=mumsnetforum-21 to say all such fetishes are perfectly healthy, not paraphilic or to be judged. Indeed the phrase 'kink shaming' is used against those who suggest that role-playing paedophilia or similar activities is harmful.

What do we think about the 'thou shalt not judge' culture of saying that all sexual behaviour is a matter for those practising it?

I’m copy and pasting the relevant posts here so people can see what was actually said:

Deep: “I believe people enjoying BDSM are, indeed, mentally ill or have some kind of unhealthy personality disorder.”

Deep: “I thought paedophilia is classified as a paraphilia. And, paraphilia often don‘t come alone. So, if you have one paraphilia there is a quite significantly increased chance you have another paraphilia. So, statistically, if you have a kink, it should be more likely you are a paedophile, compared to the general population,”

Deep has said what they think and believe.

This matters.

wearing items of clothing linked to young children (like nappies) is not mainstream and may be harmful.

And that's the normalizing part. Age play, DD/lg, and fetishes that have to do with children's apparel and clothing, are not totally ok harmless fun. They help create associations between such things and sexual gratification. The brain is malleable after all.

I posted “this thread is upsetting to child rape survivors” and you replied “no it’s not” then told me to fuck off!

No, you wrote:

IMO this thread is very dangerous because it normalises pedophila, and is hurtful and upsetting to CSA survivors.

To which I replied:

No it doesn’t and you should apologise for saying it does.

In case you missed it:

Doesn’t.

Which clearly refers to your accusation we are normalising paedophilia.

If I was denying you are upset I’d have fucking written ‘Isn’t’

‘Doesn’t upsetting’ makes no grammatical sense.

deep I don’t enjoy bdsm

oh sorry, I did not understand that 'if I and my girlfriend love spanking' that read as the general 'I'. Then I don't understand the issue all, if it is not even personal for you.

Thank you R0wantrees.

Raven

I've read the thread. And there is no doubt everyone is actually talking on the same side here.

I suspect it's the word fetish. I do understand that there are words that are technically right and technically wrong. And many people, including me, don't really know which is which.

Fetishising children and babyhood may be a paraphilia, and not a fetish. And that's a sort of technical distinction that many people won't realise is significant.

No one is saying that light spanking is the same as child rape. They are saying that the Overton window is moving to make things more acceptable today, which could result in eventually legitimising paedophilia.

BDSM is often discussed and can be a bit of a touchpaper. Because feminists might well see it as fetishising the power differential between men and women. Where spanking comes on that spectrum, is anyone's guess.

But it isn't really about individuals, it's about the bigger picture.

Jessicca Eaton, Victim Focus article May 2018:

‘Beat the pussy up’ – the way we talk about sex with women

'This blog contains a discussion of violent language to discuss sex, sexual violence and porn. It also contains the titles to real porn films that a lot of people may find disturbing. Please take care of yourself whilst reading this and seek support after reading if you need to.

(extract)

After searching for evidence on each one of the terms I listed above, I found a website discussing what ‘destroy that’ and ‘ruin that’ meant and was surprised to find how open men were when talking about what they meant. I had thought that maybe it was being used semi-consciously by men who were using it in banter, but they were using it literally. One page defined it as ‘having sex with her so rough that you cause injuries, the more physical injuries the rougher it probably was’. One man said he used it with his friends to mean destroying or ruining a ‘nice girl’ by having very aggressive sex with her or by taking her virginity.

It reminded me of a film I watched (and use in my teaching) about mail order brides and the way white, wealthy guys were buying and sexually exploiting women as servile brides from deprived areas. There was this one guy who used military metaphors to discuss meeting and having sex with potential brides. He made my skin crawl.

He is sat in a dark club when he says to the camera:

“Uh, the search and destroy mission for today is to circulate, work the room, identify a target and go for it. If plan A doesn’t work, I retreat, rally the troops and then go out and then try plan B uhh to capture the target.”

He doesn’t even say woman. He doesn’t even talk about humans. He talks about destroying and identifying targets.

This links to the second point I wanted to make – that this language dehumanises and dementalizes women – it reduces them to their ‘pussy’ or their ‘ass’ that the men are going to ‘hurt’ or ‘hit’ or ‘crush’ or ‘beat that up’. They no longer converse about sex in human terms – they talk in metaphors and disconnected, dehumanised language. They refer to women as ‘that’ or they only talk about her body parts. She is there to be used, abused and hurt for their pleasure.

Where is this sexually violent language coming from?
Well, sorry to be the not-the-fun-kind-of-feminist, but its porn and societal misogyny. There is no doubt about where this is coming from. Work by people like Julia Long and Gail Dines has long told us that porn has become more and more violent, with Long (2012) arguing that over 90% of porn now features violence against women including hitting, slapping, kicking, choking, hurting, whipping and deliberately painful and extremely degrading sex acts.

You only have to look at the titles of porn films on Pornhub or X Videos to see the way they describe women in violent and degrading terms to see where this is coming from." (continues)

victimfocus.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/beat-the-pussy-up-the-way-we-talk-about-sex-with-women/

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3253264-Very-good-article-by-Jessica-Eaton-about-language-used-to-describe-sex

You don't see Aspie in Aspie's name?

Or, with your MSc in the DSM, you were unaware that Aspie is a really commonly used contraction of Asperger's?

This is why it’s essential to differentiate from non-harmful consensual sex play, and abuse

But who determines the line of difference, and how?

Ironically, from what I gather there are moves to shift paedophilia from the category of paraphilia to 'a normal form of sexual attraction'. Now that carries the risk of normalizing paedophilia.

www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/16925-psychiatric-group-backtracks-on-pedophilia-classification

ravenlover

There are likely to be others on here who are also survivors of child sexual abuse and maybe their personal experiences have lead them to a very different mindset to yours. I'm not saying that you are wrong and they are right, just that we all experience things differently and come to different conclusions.
Please take care of yourself

This is why it’s essential to differentiate from non-harmful consensual sex play, and abuse

Raven The article by Jessicca Eaton, highlights how young people are being affected. Understanding what is perceived as 'non-harmfull' and 'consensual' requires nuance:

"In a study conducted in 2006, Fischer and Greitmeyer found that men who listened to sexually aggressive and violent lyrics were more likely to choose for women to suffer painful situations than the men who had listened to normal music lyrics in a controlled study. In a follow up study, men listening to misogynistic lyrics were more likely to subject women to ice-water-treatment than men who did not listen to the misogynistic lyrics.

However, its incomplete to argue that these lyrics and language only affect men and boys – the reality is that these lyrics, language, imagery and porn affects women and girls too. They are also absorbing these messages as normal, and as shown by the work on hypersexualisation of girls by the APA in 2007, girls and women normalise and accept these sexually violent behaviours because they have been taught by society that they are supposed to enjoy them.

Adding sexually violent lyrics to some of the bestselling songs in the world is a clear method of normalising male violence against women and girls.

What can we do about this?
Parents and Carers of children and young people

If you are a parent of an older child, there is absolutely no point in trying to protect them from these lyrics – they are everywhere! Instead, focus on bringing your children up to be critical thinkers and media-savvy. Teach them that everything they see in the media, music, advertising and news outlets are trying to manipulate them or sell something to them. Teach them clear and positive ways of talking about sex. Teach them to say ‘have sex with’ or ‘make love to’ or even ‘sleep with’. ANYTHING that isn’t negative or violent. Talk to them about the language – use the songs on the radio as an opportunity, a blessing in disguise and start to comment on the language. When something sexually aggressive or degrading comes on the TV, use co-viewing to start a debate or discussion about what you are seeing. Make a comment and ask their opinion. If you don’t teach your children about sex, the internet will. If you already watch a lot of porn, think about how different porn sex is to the real sex you’re having. Do you really want your sons or daughters thinking that porn sex is real? Do you really want your son choking teen girls? Do you really want your daughter to think that being forced to have anal is normal? If you don’t watch any porn and this blog has terrified the life out of you, have a bit of a search and see how quickly you come across violent porn. I bet it takes you less than 60 seconds of scrolling.

Professionals working with children and young people

If you are a professional, you can do absolutely everything I have listed for parents and you can also make it your mission to educate other professionals about the way language is changing to encourage the normalisation of sexual violence towards women and girls – especially as you may be working with young people you can influence through your direct work, counselling, youth work or in school sessions. I deliver porn workshops to children and trust me, they know WAY more about porn than you think. I learn something new about porn every time I talk to kids about porn. Don’t think that when you deliver your porn workshops in school, you will be shocking those teens – you will be talking to a large majority that have not only watched porn but have been significantly influenced by it. Seriously, I’ve taught teenage girls who have told me that they thought that having pubic hair was disgusting and weird because none of the women in porn have any. If you can’t face workshops about porn, build some on song lyrics and music videos – you will get all the same discussions. Teach other professionals, talk about the impact of porn, consider it in your line of work and if you can, talk to young people about porn and violence."

'het vanilla sex'...really? The way you phrase things...

If someone defines their own fetish as 'normal and healthy', I can see why they would bridle on the thread when it's discussed as being on a spectrum with paedophilia, even though right at the other end with regard to how harmful it is to others. They think it means paedophilia is being linked to a 'healthy and normal' sexual practice.

What other people are trying to say is that maybe they need to re-think the 'healthiness' of their fetish and see why it's in fact being categorised along with other disordered sexual tendencies.

But I can see that that could be quite hard to do in terms of cognitive dissonance.

To me the problem is that fetishes are getting more and more into the public domain. It's not so much about what people do in the privacy of their own homes any more.

Added to that there's growing pressure that people should not disapprove of fetishes. A suggestion disapproval is a form of bigotry.

These are the questions I ask myself:
What's the fetish?
What is involved in practice?
What is the power relationship between the parties?

Jessica Eaton is so fucking brilliant and she nails it every time.

Added to that there's growing pressure that people should not disapprove of fetishes. A suggestion disapproval is a form of bigotry

Yes this is all over platforms like twitter with accustions of 'kink shaming' or hounding people for not being 'sex positive' whatever the hell that means. Scary men are crawling out of the woodwork wherever you look and they are being cheered on by lib fems and brocialists. It is grim.

The Overton window is constantly shifting. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have even occurred to most men to strangle their partner during sex, let alone think she’d like it.

When I grew up most boys first saw naked women in loose pages of Razzle they found in parks or on railway embankments. And things were pretty hairy back then so they couldn’t see much.

But pubic hair is now a fetish in porn. Men have to go to niche websites to find it. Even ‘natural’ breasts are something special to seek out.

"I quoted ravenlover, Mary. I had not even seen your quote."

No no. My point there was that ravenlover had 'quoted' you, removed the word 'more' from your post and then claimed you had said that sexual fetishes are the same as paedophilia, rather than merely correlated to them.