Different Loving

by William Brame

  I discovered fairly early on in my sexual development that I was multiorgasmic and also that I could have orgasms without ejaculating, and, for that matter, I could ejaculate without having an orgasm. Orgasm [is] possible in many ways which don’t have anything to do with the classical interpretation of how it all works. I’ve [even] come from having my earlobes sucked! I got that idea from a guy in a wheelchair. I asked him about sex, and he said, “I’ve just relocated my erogenous zone.” He said he wouldn’t let just anybody touch his ear! It had to be somebody special. For him that was like his penis!

  There is one very loving little story about how I knew that Adida was a keeper. I hadn’t been with a woman since my ex. I already had my Prince Albert. Adida and I came back to her house, and she basically got me drunk. I didn’t have any idea what her reaction was likely to be to the piercing. I had intended to sneak off to the bathroom and remove it, but things acquired a momentum of their own. I was thinking, Oh, my God! Worst case, she’ll call the cops; best case, she’ll require lengthy explanation.

  She reached down and put me inside her, and we did the thing, and she never broke stride. So, finally, we’re cuddling and I said, “Did you notice anything?” “Oh! It was very nice.” “The ring?” I asked. And she said, “Oh, that!” She didn’t even give me the satisfaction of saying, “Oh, my God! What’s that?” She’d never seen one; she’d never even heard of it before! I figured, There’s something special about somebody like that!

  SECTION FIVE

  TRANSLOCATIONS OF DESIRE

  EIGHTEEN

  FETISHISM

  “I think,” said Brown, “that when we are children we are much more inclined to be fetishists of one kind or another. I remember hiding inside of my mother’s closet and feeling ecstasy at smelling her clothes and feeling them. Even today I cannot resist a woman who is wearing a veil or tulle or feathers.… ”

  —ANAÏS NIN1

  The sacred and profane are nowhere more intimately intertwined than in the realm of fetishism, whose linguistic identity itself originates in the religious and whose practices often involve elaborate, sometimes ecstatic rituals. Fetishism always has been a fertile field for sexuality research, both because of its apparently infinite permutations and its conduciveness to theorizing. The arguments on nurture versus nature are heated: Some believe that fetishistic interests in adults are the result of traumatic events in infancy and early childhood. To others, genetic predisposition is the dominant influence.

  In this chapter we profile two individuals who bring distinct perspectives to fetishism:

  • Dian Hanson is the editor of Leg Show magazine. She is 40 years old and was twice married and divorced. She is now in a long-term monogamous relationship.

  • Ava Taurel owns and operates a New York—based company that specializes in D&S psychodrama. She has lectured on S/M at New York University’s Human Sexuality program and Rutgers Medical School and at other schools nationwide. She is 47 years old.

  WHAT IS FETISHISM?

  The definitions of fetish are so numerous that one would not be completely amiss in saying that each of us, to one degree or another, has at least one. Would Linus in the comic strip Peanuts be the same without his little blanket?

  There is not an organ of the human body, not a single article of clothing or of daily use which may not become an object of fetishism.

  —WILHELM STEKEL2

  The word fetish derives from the Portuguese feitiço. It was apparently first used by 15th Century Portuguese explorers to describe West African sacred carvings. In its original (and current anthropological) meaning, fetish refers to a sacred artifact invested with spiritual or talismanic power. The erotic fetish is not merely a symbol of the divine but is itself divine. It possesses a discrete power: It can arouse and, sometimes, induce ecstasy in its devotee. For fetishists, a shoe may be sexier than the foot it adorns; lingerie more enticing than the erotic anatomy it screens; a rubber coat more stimulating than the person it contains.

  Fetishism is a translocation of desire: The sexual impulse is directed away from genitalia and toward another part of the body or to an object. To Freud, this turning away clearly implied castration anxiety, and neo-Freudians proceed from this basis. To Jung, fixation on objects associated with childhood sexual encounters implied arrested sexual development. (Indeed, contemporary psychiatrists, such as Otto Kernberg, attribute all sadomasochistic acts to arrested development, although such analyses are no longer necessarily censorious.) Contemporary theorists are still wrangling over the etiology of fetishism.

  The clinical definition of a fetishist is someone who cannot be aroused without the fetish item. Formerly a distinction was drawn between the erotic interest in inanimate objects (fetishism) and erotic interest in parts of the body (partialism). Modern theorists, however, expand the definition of fetishism to embrace both.

  So varied are the types of fetishism that have been studied in the last century that a plethora of subcategories exists. A short list includes hyphephilia (arousal by human hair, animal fur, leather, and fabrics, especially upon erogenous zones); mysophilia (arousal by smelling or chewing soiled and/or sweaty apparel); olfactophilia (arousal by the odors of parts of the body); and transvestophilia (arousal from wearing the clothing, especially underclothing, of the opposite sex).

  The American fixation on female breasts is really fetishism by popular consensus. Women who opt for breast augmentation can bear testimony to the American equation of buxom and sexy. What we believe to be sexually acceptable is always culturally determined. In America even disfigurements of the female form, such as implants that result in titanic but nonfunctional protrusions, are sometimes admired. In other cultures different body parts excite the erotic appetite. In Japan, for example, the nape of the neck is tantalizingly sexy; in some African cultures, bulky haunches are a paradigm of femininity; in China, it’s a petite foot.

  To be out of sexual syncopation with your society’s beauty standards puts one at a distinct disadvantage; the American man who prefers a foot to a breast is likely to be viewed with discomfort or antipathy.

  A lot of what I do in Leg Show is work to make the readers feel better about their fetishes, because I get letters every week from men who have attempted suicide, who’ve spent years in therapy trying to rid themselves of something as simple as a desire to kiss women’s feet—something as healthy and nonthreatening, nondangerous as foot fetishism or shoe fetishism or stocking fetishism. But because it’s not acceptable in our culture, most of these men do not let anyone, including their wives, know about their interests.

  —DIAN HANSON

  Why it is that an object may be more exciting than a person, or a part more exciting than the whole, has been a source of lengthy debate.

  I always thought that the whole body was beautiful; [that] the whole was a work of art. Therefore, liking a part of the body was not a sick thing, just a puzzling thing. Why do I like this part more than that part? I don’t know, but I just do. There’s no difference between [my] fondling a foot and a straight man fondling a woman’s breast. A body part is a body part.

  —DOUG GAINES

  Pioneering studies of sexual fetishism were undertaken by the father of standardized testing, Alfred Binet, in 1891. Binet theorized that fetishism is acquired largely through association. For example, if a boy has an erection at the moment he sees a woman remove her fur coat, he will from then on equate his excitement with the act or the object and become dependent upon fur for excitement. This theory is supported by anecdotal information and may help explain why men are more often observed to be fetishistic.

  When we’re young, we’re down on the floor [and] we’re around feet before the age where we learn disgust for these odors. We’re not born being disgusted by physical odors. Human odors are meant to be alluring. We’re down there and there is a fascinating odor, often accompanied by stimulation, particularly for a boy. A boy has a meter of his stimulation that a woman doesn’t: his penis. So the b
oy smells the foot; his penis can become erect without him even thinking about sex, because our nose goes to the old brain.

  —DIAN HANSON

  Women, differently equipped, do not have as conspicuous a signal of arousal. Yet many of the women we interviewed reported that they were fetishists; more women, indeed, volunteered this information than men.

  I had a fetishistic revelation: For some reason belts really [and specifically] turn me on, aside from the whole turn-on of being beaten.

  —JOHANNA

  I like leather clothing, I like leather toys, and I especially like leather boots. I am a boot fetishist, whether running my tongue across them or wearing them. I fetishize uniforms and ultramasculine attire, whether Fruit of the Looms, white Jockey shorts, or a three-piece suit. I like police uniforms. I also fetishize Victorian garb on other women.

  —LAURA ANTONIO

  It has been a clinical truism for decades that fetishists are uniquely male although extensive case studies of female fetishists abound in the earlier psychological literature. There are documented cases of grown women with fetishes for dolls or who were erotically addicted to satin.3

  We believe that both genders are equally likely to be fetishistic, but that from childhood on, men are apt to be more aware of the erotic connection because their arousal is visible. As adults, they are more assertive in seeking out encounters and discussing the interest. Women are liable to be unaware of the connection between object or act and personal arousal. And since women are usually discouraged from acting on their sexual impulses, they probably are more likely to hide their desires, even from themselves. Meanwhile, women have sanctioned outlets for fetishistic urges. They may collect shoes, for example, without stirring comment.

  Perhaps the reason many of our female subjects identify themselves as fetishists has to do with the general tendency of D&S females to identify and experiment with a diversity of erotic stimuli and to acknowledge sexual quirks openly.

  In response to Binet’s associative theory, Krafft-Ebing proposed another analysis: Some children are predisposed to become excited. Krafft-Ebing’s “constitutional theory” became the standard behind which the psychological community rallied for a time. It tied in with an accepted tenet of psychological theory that mental deviation is either the product of injury or disease of the central nervous system, or it is a congenital condition. Sigmund Freud later emphasized a similar conclusion. Such personality theories are, at best, debatable. Reliable scientific study of environment’s effect on sexuality is virtually impossible (sexual research remains anecdotal), and genetic research is still emerging.

  John Money’s concept of lovemaps—a primarily philosophical catchall concept that emphasizes environmental factors—has won some popularity. It posits that trauma can cause the fetishistic impulse. For example, the child whose parent teaches him to respond with deep shame or disgust to genitalia may then direct his lust to a less emotionally charged object.

  The fetish and talismanic stratagem requires that the partner be saved from lust and that some token, the fetish or talisman, be the object of lust instead.

  —JOHN MONEY4

  None of our interviewees reported a specifically and sexually traumatic link, although it is impossible to ignore the amount of guilt and shame many fetishists experience. It seems likely that low self-esteem and fetishism are inextricably intertwined in most fetishists, and not that one necessarily proceeds from the other. Self-acceptance among fetishists is among the lowest of any category of sexual diversity. The lonely fetishist stealing secret moments to indulge his interest is a distressingly common phenomenon.

  The feelings of difference were tough. “Why am I different? Why do I have to be different? Why can’t I be like everybody else and react the same way as everybody else instead of having this extra heartbeat kicker happening whenever I see an amputee?” This seems to be much more of a positive, now.

  —ROB

  The first conscious memories of fetish experience are often pleasurable ones.

  The origin of my rubber fetish is obviously at the pleasing hands of an adult. This causes many of the several thousand fellow professionals who have heard my story to attempt to make that encounter traumatic. It was not, in any way. Recently one person tried to have me admit that I might have suffered when I discovered what a horrible thing was done to me, but I haven’t discovered that yet.

  —THOMAS O. SARGENT5

  I remember at the age of four having some neighbor men chase us around and tease us kids playing tag in the front yard. One neighbor caught me and pretended to sit on me. I said, “Whatever you do, don’t put your feet in my face.” He slipped off his moccasin and shoved his foot in my face—which was just what I wanted. This is before I was even aware of sexuality. I knew [what] I had was an intrinsic interest in the foot, and I was a precocious little runt who manipulated this man into doing what I wanted him to do. The interest was [already] there.

  —DOUG GAINES

  One interviewee described feeling consoled by rubber after an early problem with bed-wetting.

  The only childhood experience I can relate that has shaped my current sexual orientation is that when I was very young I used to wet the bed, and my mother made me sleep on a rubber sheet. I grew so attached to it that when I stopped wetting, I kept a piece of the sheet in bed with me and couldn’t fall asleep without it. Finally, my mother had to bribe me—I was about five—to get that piece of rubber away. To this day the smell of latex and baby powder gives me a tremendous visceral jolt. Talk about being imprinted!

  —ALLEN

  The actual physical objects that may become the center of fetishistic desire vary wildly. Dr. Money organizes fetishes into two types.

  There are two classes of fetishes: the smellies and the feelies. For the fetishist, the smell or feel of the fetish is, in each instance, associated with the human body—for example, the smell of shoes or jockstraps, or the feel of hair, fur, silk, rubber (from training pants), and so on.

  —JOHN MONEY6

  We add to these the tasties and the seeies, and even the hearies, as fetishists describe other senses besides smell and feel as key to their arousal. Some interviewees believe that fetishes engage all the senses.

  WHAT DO THEY LIKE?

  Despite apparent similarities, each fetishist is unique. Within a single broad classification (for example, rubber fetishists) there is fantastic variety.

  Among rubber fetishists, for example, some like latex, others like rubber, some like the material on cloth backing, while others are turned off by the cloth. There are those who like it dry and velvety and those who like it wet, those who are stimulated by the smell of urine and sweat, and those who are fastidious, those who like it tight fitting and those who like it loosely caressing, those who enjoy manual stimulation of themselves and those who like to lie on it, those who prefer it with a partner, others who want it alone, those who prefer a female partner, those who prefer male, and those who enjoy both. Some prefer this or that taste, sound, smell, or feel, and may be turned off by other types of rubber. There are those who prefer rubber gloves, those who like baby pants, book bags, bathing caps, balloons, condoms, boots, bloomers, bathing suits, beach bags, those who desire rubber aprons and those who exist for a red rubber coat with a double back, rubber on the outside and smelling and rustling exactly like their fantasy.

  —THOMAS O. SARGENT7

  Virtually anything can be the object of fetishistic adulation. In an erotic context the fetish object is invested with all the dark mystery and allure usually attributed to a partner or a partner’s erogenous zones.

  If a person responds more to the clothing than to you as a person, you can feel diminished. The sad part of it is that there are people who respond more to the clothing.

  —AVA TAUREL

  While fetishists may be thrilled by a particular object, some enjoy an entire outfit.

  I have a wonderful playmate. He is a very visual person and he gets turned on by differe
nt looks—uniforms, spandex, rubber, leather.

  —JEFF BRITTON

  For dominants, wearing a complete fetish outfit is an opportunity to don the cloak of authority; for submissives, the outfit signifies power.

  To lick the boots or smell the feet of a policeman or a person in uniform is very erotic. That symbol of authority is very popular among our fetishists. For some the idea of being the foot slave to a successful businessman—to be his desk as he works—is very exciting. So there are some who like to worship a person in a position of power. Others simply like certain types of shoes.

  —DOUG GAINES

  In this respect, fetishists resemble those who collect diverse wardrobes to reflect different moods and activities: business clothes, gym outfits, at-home clothes, evening gowns, sexy lingerie. But the fetishist’s purpose is expressly erotic.

  Also, despite the depth of their passion, fetishists are rarely faithful to any single object: Most require variety. They typically assemble large collections of articles that meet their individual requirements. While boot fetishists may amass boots in varying styles, and leather fetishists may collect stores of clothing and implements, those who are attracted to a part of the body frequently display a similar sensual philandering. Even though he may remain sexually monogamous, to the foot fetishist, an unfamiliar foot is an intoxicatingly erotic enigma and a new land to conquer—at least in fantasy.