Why do men have fetishes? What is the biology/ psychology behind them?

[CrazyOldMe]

Has anyone looked into this?

I’m curious as to why humans, especially men, have developed to have sexual fetishes? Like, what’s the advantage to us as a species here?

Or, are such desires nurtured via society and so on?

Any insights appreciated

All apetites, if you feed them, get stronger...and they grow to require more and more of whatever it is, to achieve the same level of satiation.

Supposedly formed in childhood according to a lot of theories. E.G spanking as a fetish (rather than a kink) is on its way out with the decline of the acceptance of physical punishment on children. A lot of people who were hit on the bum as children would have this as a fetish as it took them back to (ironically) their childhood where they may feel safe. And turning the punishment into enjoyment as a form of control.

Sub/dom-some people who have very high pressure, senior roles will like to be dominated-they've felt they'd had to be in control their whole life and having someone take control of them is arousing as a result-again, takes them to childhood-a time before they were in such a position. Others will want to dominate if their childhood was controlling and they weren't allowed much autonomy.

The most common fetish is feet-childhood borne because when we're young we see a LOT of feet, we're on the floor. Also accounts for this fetish being less common in those brought up in countries where babies are on the floor less (carried in slings a lot for example).

Freud had a lot to say on fetishes and yes he's largely discredited in lots of ways but fetish wise, he makes sense IMO.

Yes,a friend of mine said he recalled being chased by his mother who was going to " batter him" and he ended up feeling an intense sexual thrill. The heightened emotions of fear and flight merged into sexual feeling.

It also transfers over into serial killings. A lot of motivation is found to be sexual and with an element of fetish/kink.

Our brains do some funny things.

I have a common-ish fetish and I can absolutely put it down to childhood, I hated this thing happening as a child but now I am aroused by the feeling of being out of control. Weirdly I sort of remember it forming when I was a young teen although obviously I didn't know what it were at the time.

I've always know a spandrel as an architectural term for part of an arch...

So he's saying fetishes fill in draughty holes, then? 😁

I reckon evolutionary theory is no better then examining chickens' entrails. It unerringly fits whatever theory happens to be in fashion, whatever the subject.

Men are more likely than when to have innate sexual desire, women's is more likely than men's to be reactive (ie to another person's desire). Leastways that's what I've read somewhere. Reactive desire would seem less likely to allow for kinks and fetishes because by its nature it's focused on a person rather than a thing.

My unscientific view is that there are a bunch of things that come together.

Some of it's probably innate. We know that, on average, boys are more object focused and girls are more people focused. Boys are more visual and girls are more verbal.

Lots of kinks and fetishes will have their roots in early life, even in the pre-sexual stage.

Obviously women have fetishes - I've never believed the line that only men have them. But men are much more likely to have seriously weird fetishes and much much more likely to become obsessive about them.

I think the easy availability of online porn is a huge driver here. We know a bit about how social media algorithms work - they give us more of what they think we want. I once watched a YouTube video of Sylvester Stallone on a talk show, and I swear, for months afterwards YouTube thought I was the world's biggest Stallone fan.

And that's where the likes of Pornhub come in. Take a man who's long term single in today's anarchic sexual market, or even take a man who's in a relationship but finds himself alone for the night and horny. Pornhub will take whatever latent fetish he has and put rocket fuel under it.

This is where it gets to be addictive. I haven't read The Fix by Damian Thompson for a few years, but it's a fascinating book about addiction and goes a bit into porn addicts, how they'll collect enormous numbers of images and obsessively catalogue them, looking for that perfect one that's always just out of reach.

That part of the book reminded me a bit of obsessive stamp collectors. There's a strange bit of the male psyche that leans into obsession in a way that women find hard to grasp.

Thinking back to my cognitive science/neuroscience classes from years ago, male sexuality (in humans and even in rats) is heavily influenced by Pavlovian response mechanisms. That is, men's reward centres can become imprinted on certain stimuli even if it's not inherently sexual. If men associate something good (orgasm) with a stimulus (like high heel shoes), this can escalate into a fetish where the only way they can orgasm is with reference to high heel shoes.

Women's sexuality is different. Women's sexuality is not Pavlovian motivated, but is far more diffuse and diverse. There was a study where they found that women became mildly aroused by all sexual imagery, including gay, straight, cartoons etc, whereas men only because aroused by imagery which tracked their strong preferences and sexual orientation.

I can’t get my head around how male/female sexuality is often so incompatible. I get we’re asymmetrical, but this appears to drive us further apart rather than bring us together. Like why is porn so segregated for instance? How can an activity we are designed to do together leave us so separated in our own desires? I was very affected when I watched this long form debate about is porn a good thing or not, and the stuff Germain Greer said struck a deep chord with me. Here’s her bit: G

It seems to me any sexual narrative that is devoid of true intimacy is ultimately going to drag us apart. Now there is nothing wrong with the odd kink here or there, it doesn’t have to run counter to intimacy but at the fetishistic end it certainly can.

Yeah, the Pavlovian aspect of male sexuality is definitely a thing.

We usually talk about the decline of Star Wars as a franchise in terms of Disney putting out subpar product. But I wonder if we could turn this on its head and say the longevity of Star Wars fandom has to do with millions of middle aged men who got their first erections from Carrie Fisher in that metal bikini.

There's a strange bit of the male psyche that leans into obsession in a way that women find hard to grasp
Agreed!

Where is the data to support men having more? Is this just a "I've dated five guys and two have had fetishes" thing?

I think much of this is down to exposure to porn. Women apparently watch less.

Maybe a lot of women have fetishes but don't admit them, even to themselves? The subconscious mind is huge. A lot of people also don't realise they have a fetish until they're exposed to it with a partner during sex or other activities.

I reckon evolutionary theory is no better then examining chickens' entrails.

The trouble is it has been misused and misunderstood and is hauled out to explain/excuse all kinds of behaviours in a simplistic way. But we did evolve, and we do have innate instincts and biological functions that are there because they conferred a survival advantage. Usually, they're mixed in with a whole lot of cultural and learned stuff too and it's not straightforward.

I strongly suspect that many women who get drawn into prostitution or 'sex work' and who try to present it as a positive choice do so as a result of trying to re-frame or take control of childhood abuse.

A man who has a fetish is more likely to convert said fetish into the sex act than a woman. And is more likely to enact the sex act with more women, as he doesn't care about the women who are not present as persons to him. So men with fetishes are more likely to produce the next generation than the men who don't have fetishes and have more reasonable sex with relationships with actual women. Hence the evolutionary advantage. More offspring from fetishists than from non-fetishists. Evolution doesn't necessarily produce an improvement. More's the pity.

I think we are in what I call the ‘BBC must have balance’ scenario here - by saying that plenty of women have kinks too - they may do but in my experience it’s actually dwarfed by the number of men who have very specific fetishes- or can’t get it up unless a very specific ‘thing’ is included as part of the act

Quite! I'm afraid my current thinking is that if it did we'd be long past the point of no longer requiring men for reproduction! 😂

Definitely - this is very anecdotal and I can't quantify, but any women I know who admit to fetishes will say their fetish is a 'nice to have' and they'll balance it against other considerations.

I don't see that male tendency to fixate on one very specific thing and make it an essential.

Which I think is actually maladaptive for men in the dating market, but the heart (or dick) wants what it wants.

Interesting question and worth looking at alongside other research and areas. For example the first FBI profiiling unit, the 'Mind Hunter' days, and the group of behaviours identified under the head 'inadequates' who were highly likely to escalate into serious sexual crime and the pattern they followed. Paraphilias of particular types, tending to cluster, certain ones being extremely common in association with others that were of a serious/offending type. One sex over represented in some categories.

Then worth looking into addiction as a general topic. Does it affect one sex more than another, or does one sex tend to act on addiction in more impactful ways upon others particularly towards violence and crime? How does an addiction escalate? What are the common behaviours?

It's interesting when looking at the transwidows accounts for example that many of them experienced a 'binge and purge' cycle in their partner, the pattern of escalation, other values and beliefs being discarded and overwritten.

I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages. I think from the brief amount I have read is that is deep seated feelings of insecurity and inferiority.

In fairness, a lot of them admit it too.

This has been known for decades, there is a ton of psychological literature on it.

Yes.

Also - many people don't seem to know what a fetish is, and just think it's a weird sex behavior, not something that is such an obsession (and inherently a non-sexual item, like a shoe) that it dominates all sexual desire - and make sex impossible without the fetish present.

Well, Freud didn't really understand women but he definitely had a handle on male sexuality.