Fetish

What is a fetish?

A fetish (Dutch: fetisj) is an object, material, body part or situation to which someone assigns a strong and very specific erotic charge. With a fetish the arousal sits in that one thing and not in the person as a whole. A fetish is a preference; only when someone suffers from it does psychiatry speak of a disorder.

What a fetish looks like in practice

More everyday than the word suggests. A fetish is rarely a different kind of sex, but one element that has to be there for it to really work.

For the International Journal of Impotence Research, Scorolli and colleagues mapped 381 internet discussion groups, with at least five thousand participants. Two categories filled almost two thirds: body parts 33 percent and objects worn on the body 30 percent. Feet came out on top.

A typical case: someone finds leather arousing. Not as a picture on a screen, but when it is there. The glove that stays on, the smell, the sound when something moves. Without leather something still happens, with leather it goes faster. That is the whole fetish. No scenario, no role, one material that flips the switch.

Where the word fetish comes from

From Portuguese trade on the West African coast, and only centuries later from psychology. The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands records fetisso in 1602, in a Dutch travel account, as an “object (or animal) to which divine honor is paid”. Behind it sits the Portuguese feitiço, sorcery, from the Late Latin factīcius, artificial, and ultimately from facere: to make.

The sexual meaning is younger. English has had it since 1901, Dutch since 1919, and then as an “object or normally non-erogenous body part that causes sexual arousal”. Almost word for word what the DSM-5 still makes of it a century later. That the word sounds so heavy comes from the four centuries of idol worship underneath it.

Why a fetish works so strongly

Because a fetish is precise, and precision is rare in sex.

Someone who has a fetish knows what works. No searching, no guessing. For a partner that is more concrete information than the answer to “well, what do you want?”.

• For the person with the fetish there is something the arousal responds to reliably, even on a day when the rest is not cooperating.
• For the partner the guesswork falls away: a fetish is a cue, not a feeling you have to guess at.
• For a couple it is often the first time preferences are talked about out loud.

Rare it is not. For The Journal of Sex Research, Joyal and Carpentier surveyed 1,040 residents of Québec: almost half had an interest in at least one paraphilic category. Fetishism came out, for men and women alike, above the 15.9 percent that counts as statistically unusual, with no significant difference between the sexes.

A fetish takes nothing away. If the arousal runs only through that one thing, then it becomes narrow for a partner.

How people share a fetish with a partner

Often much later than they want to. The order that works out best in practice:

1. First name what it is, in plain words, without an apology up front.
2. Then say how big it is: something you enjoy, or something without which little gets going for you.
3. Only then suggest what you would want, and how small it can start.

Timing separates the careful version from the careless one. In the middle of bed is the worst place for this conversation, because there every answer immediately becomes a decision.

What a fetish is not

“A fetish is a mental disorder.” No. The American Psychiatric Association puts it briefly itself: most people with an atypical sexual interest do not have a mental disorder. For fetishistic disorder the DSM-5 requires six months of intense arousal from non-living objects or non-genital body parts, and clinically relevant distress or impairment. Without that second part there is no diagnosis.

“The WHO sees it more strictly.” The other way around. The working group behind the ICD-11 proposed dropping F65.0 Fetishism, F65.1 Fetishistic transvestism and F65.5 Sadomasochism; Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland had already taken them off their national diagnosis lists by then.

“A fetish is the same as a fetish party.” A fetish party is an evening with a dress code. You can go without having a single fetish, and you can have a fetish and never visit one.

“Fetishes are a men’s thing.” That picture comes from older research on clinical populations. Joyal and Carpentier found no significant difference between the sexes for fetishism.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. A fetish almost never reaches me as a topic. It reaches me as a confession.

The mismatch between the tension beforehand and the conversation itself is large. Someone has sometimes taken years over it, and then it is out in a single sentence. The fetish is rarely the problem. The silence around it is, because silence turns a preference into a secret, and a secret needs upkeep.

Beyond that, people underestimate how small the first step can be. One glove, ten minutes. Enough to know whether it is what you thought.

What you can do yourself

• Say what it is before you say what you want. The object or the body part first, the proposal after.
• Say how big your fetish is, because the difference between “I enjoy this” and “this is where it starts for me” decides what a partner can do with it.
• Start with the smallest part that touches the fetish, not with the whole scene from your head.
• Pick a moment outside of bed, so nobody has to decide anything on the spot.
• Seek help from a doctor or therapist if you suffer from it yourself, or if your fetish involves people who have not consented to it. That is the line the DSM-5 holds.

More about fetishes

On this site the fetishes with their own entry are worked out separately: boot worship about boots and foot fetish about feet. The social side is at fetish party, the umbrella at BDSM.

Beyond this site, the factsheet from the American Psychiatric Association gives the shortest honest answer to the question of whether a fetish is a disorder. How things stand at the WHO you can read with Reed and colleagues.

Where this fits on this site

If you have a fetish you have never been able to try out with anyone, then the conversation about it is the first step and not the play itself. The page on the BDSM date explains how such an evening is prepared: what you pass on beforehand and how we agree on how far it goes.

Sources

• Paraphilic Disorders. American Psychiatric Association, 2013. Supplies the statement that most people with an atypical sexual interest do not have a mental disorder, the two conditions the DSM-5 sets for a paraphilic disorder, and that fetishistic disorder is one of the eight named paraphilic disorders.
• DSM-5 and Paraphilic Disorders. First, The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 42(2), 191–201, 2014. Reprints with permission the DSM-5 criteria: at least six months of recurrent and intense arousal from non-living objects or a strongly focused attention on non-genital body parts, plus clinically relevant distress or impairment in functioning.
• Disorders related to sexuality and gender identity in the ICD-11. Reed, Drescher, Krueger et al., World Psychiatry 15(3), 205–221, 2016. Supplies the WHO working group’s proposal to drop F65.0 Fetishism, F65.1 Fetishistic transvestism and F65.5 Sadomasochism from the classification, that Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland had already done so, and the principle that an unusual arousal pattern without distress, dysfunction or harm is not a mental disorder.
• The Prevalence of Paraphilic Interests and Behaviors in the General Population: A Provincial Survey. Joyal & Carpentier, The Journal of Sex Research 54(2), 161–171, 2017. Survey of 1,040 residents of Québec; supplies that almost half had an interest in at least one paraphilic category, that fetishism came out above the 15.9 percent that counts as statistically unusual, and that the difference between men and women for fetishism was not significant.
• Relative prevalence of different fetishes. Scorolli, Ghirlanda, Enquist, Zattoni & Jannini, International Journal of Impotence Research 19(4), 432–437, 2007. 381 internet discussion groups with an estimated five thousand participants at least; supplies the distribution across body parts (33%), objects worn on the body (30%), behavior of others (18%), one’s own behavior (7%), social behavior (7%) and objects not worn on the body (5%), and that feet come out on top.
• Fetisj. Philippa, Debrabandere, Quak, Schoonheim & Van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, 2003–2009, via etymologiebank.nl. Supplies the first Dutch attestation fetisso from 1602, the origin via Portuguese feitiço and Late Latin factīcius from facere, and the sexual meaning from 1901 in English and 1919 in Dutch.

Related terms

• BDSM. The umbrella that begins where power or pain is added to a fetish.
• Fetish party. The evening with a dress code, where a fetish is not a condition of entry.
• Boot worship. The fetish for boots, with the rituals that go with it.
• FetLife. The network where you list your fetishes on your profile.
• Foodplay. The fetish where food is the material, with the hygiene side included.
• Golden shower. The act within urolagnia, the fetish where urine is the material.
• Kink. The wider circle a fetish falls under, with the Dutch figures.
• Foot fetish. The most common fetish of all, with the brain explanation that fell apart in 2014.
• Uniform fetish. The edge case where not the object but its meaning carries the arousal.