It seems like we’re using the word ‘fetish’ differently, and I’m worried that that might lead to confusion. My original point was about how the cultural meanings of various things can change over time—including but not limited to what would or would not be considered a fetish (i.e. ‘unusual to be aroused by’). If nearly everyone in a given culture is aroused by a certain thing, then it’s not unusual in that culture, and it’s not a fetish for people in that culture to be aroused by that thing, at least given how I’m using the word. (Otherwise, any arousing trait would be considered a fetish if at least one culture doesn’t or didn’t share our opinion of it, and I suspect that idea wouldn’t sit well with most people.)
I propose that the useful dividing line between a fetish and an aspect of a given person’s culture is whether or not the arousing thing is universal enough in that culture that it can be used communicatively—that appears to be a good indication that people in that culture are socialized to be aroused by that thing when they wouldn’t naturally be aroused by it without the socialization. I also suspect that that socialization is accomplished by teaching people to see the relevant things as communication, automatically, as a deep heuristic—so that that flash of ankle or breast is taken as a signal that the flasher is sexually receptive, without any thought involved on the flashee’s part.
It makes much more sense to me that thinking that someone was sexually receptive would be arousing than that somehow nearly everyone in a given culture somehow wound up with an attraction to ankles for their own sake, for no apparent reason, and without other cultures experiencing the same thing. There may be another explanation, though—were you considering some other theory?
It makes much more sense to me that thinking that someone was sexually receptive would be arousing than that somehow nearly everyone in a given culture somehow wound up with an attraction to ankles for their own sake, for no apparent reason, and without other cultures experiencing the same thing.
This seems true to me. No American male would deny that he is attracted to at least one of the big three (breasts, buttocks, face), and attracted for their own sake, and for no apparent reason. (Who instructed them to like those?)
Yet National Geographic is famous for all its bare-breasted photos of women who seem to neither notice nor care, and ditto for the men. The simplest explanation to me is just that cultures have regions of sexiness, with weak ties to biological facts like childbirth, and fetishes are any assessment of sexiness below a certain level of prevalence. Much simpler than all your communication.
Well, the awareness that there are people who have a fetish for X in this culture might make it less surprising that there is a whole culture that finds X sexy.
You’re at least partly right about the communication theory. One big turn on for most people is that someone is sexually interested in them, as communicated by revealing normally hidden body parts. Supposedly in Victorian times legs were typically hidden, so revealing them would be communicative.
Another part of this is that the idea of a taboo is itself sexy, whether or not there is communicative intent. Just the idea of seeing something normally secret or forbidden is arousing to many people.
I’m curious about your example that came up in your life, if you’re willing to share.
Well, the awareness that there are people who have a fetish for X in this culture might make it less surprising that there is a whole culture that finds X sexy.
I suppose that’s true, though it’s not obvious to me that something would have to start as a fetish to wind up considered sexual by a culture.
Another part of this is that the idea of a taboo is itself sexy, whether or not there is communicative intent. Just the idea of seeing something normally secret or forbidden is arousing to many people.
This appears to be true—I’ve heard it before, anyway—but it doesn’t make sense, to me, at least as a sexual thing.
Except, as I’m thinking of it now, it does seem to make sense in the context of communicating. Sharing some risky (in the sense that if it were made public knowledge, you’d take a social-status hit) bit of information is a hard-to-fake signal that you’re serious about the relationship, and doing something risky together is a natural way of reciprocating with each other regarding that. It seems like it’d serve more of a pair-bonding purpose than strictly a sexual one, but the two are so intertwined in humans that it’s not really surprising that it’d do both.
I’m curious about your example that came up in your life, if you’re willing to share.
My first boyfriend had a thing for walking through puddles while wearing tennis shoes without socks. Pretty boring, as fetishes go.
I suppose that’s true, though it’s not obvious to me that something would have to start as a fetish to wind up considered sexual by a culture.
It wouldn’t. That’s not what I meant: I meant that someone considering Victorian culture, say, where it was allegedly commonplace to find ankles sexy, might not find it too surprising if he knew about people with an ankle fetish in this culture. As in “I know someone who finds ankles sexy in this culture, so it’s not that weird for ankles to be considered sexy in a completely different culture.”
Communicating risky information is more of a pair-bonding thing than a sexual one. I was thinking about seeing something taboo or hidden as sexual. Say it’s in a picture or it’s unintentional, so there’s no communicative intent. A lot of sexuals find it exciting just because it’s “forbidden”. You might be able to relate if you’ve ever been told you can’t do something and that just made you want it more.
A lot of sexuals find it exciting just because it’s “forbidden”. You might be able to relate if you’ve ever been told you can’t do something and that just made you want it more.
That sounds bizarre. I understand assuming that something that a higher-ranking person is allowed to have, that you’re not allowed, is a good thing to try to get. It sounds like the cause and effect part of it what you described is backwards from the way that makes sense to me: ‘This is good because it’s not allowed’, not ‘this is not allowed because it’s good and in limited supply’. What could being wired that way possibly accomplish besides causing you grief?
ETA: I have heard of that particular mental quirk before, and probably even seen it in action. I’m not saying that it’s unusual to have it, just that it seems incomprehensible and potentially harmful, to me.
Well, you’re really asking two questions: why is it useful, and how to comprehend it.
As far as comprehending it… well, I had thought it was a human universal to be drawn to forbidden things. Have you really never felt the urge to do something forbidden, or the desire to break rules? Maybe it’s just because I tend to be a thrill-seeker and a risk-taker.
I think you might be misunderstanding. I don’t make a logical deduction that something is a good thing because it’s not allowed. I do feel emotionally drawn towards things that are forbidden. It’s got nothing to do with “higher-ranking” people.
It’s a pretty natural human urge to go exploring and messing around in forbidden areas. It’s useful because it’s what helps topple dictatorships, encourages scientific inquiry, and stirs up revolutions.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt the need to break a rule just for the sake of doing so. I vaguely remember being curious enough about the supposed draw of doing forbidden things to try it in some minor way, out of curiosity, as a teenager, but it’s pretty obvious how that worked out. (My memory of my teenage years is horrible, so I don’t have details, and could actually be incorrect altogether.) My reaction to rules in general is fairly neutral: I tend to assume that they have (or at least, were intended to have) good reasons behind them, but have no objection to breaking rules whose reasons don’t seem relevant to the issue at hand.
I did understand that you were talking about something different, but that different thing doesn’t make sense.
I am typically only drawn to forbidden things when I do not know why they are forbidden, or know that they are forbidden for stupid reasons and find the forbidden thing a desideratum for other reasons. In the first case, it’s a matter of curiosity—why has someone troubled to forbid me this thing? In the second, it’s just that the thing is already a desideratum and the forbiddance provides no successfully countervailing reason to avoid seeking it.
What could being wired that way possibly accomplish besides causing you grief?
Like the ‘prestige’ metric that has been discussed recently ‘things that the powerful want to stop me from doing’ is a strong indicator of potential value to someone even though it is intrinsically meaningless. Obviously having this generalised wiring leads them to desire irrelevant or even detrimental things sometimes.
It seems like we’re using the word ‘fetish’ differently, and I’m worried that that might lead to confusion. My original point was about how the cultural meanings of various things can change over time—including but not limited to what would or would not be considered a fetish (i.e. ‘unusual to be aroused by’). If nearly everyone in a given culture is aroused by a certain thing, then it’s not unusual in that culture, and it’s not a fetish for people in that culture to be aroused by that thing, at least given how I’m using the word. (Otherwise, any arousing trait would be considered a fetish if at least one culture doesn’t or didn’t share our opinion of it, and I suspect that idea wouldn’t sit well with most people.)
I propose that the useful dividing line between a fetish and an aspect of a given person’s culture is whether or not the arousing thing is universal enough in that culture that it can be used communicatively—that appears to be a good indication that people in that culture are socialized to be aroused by that thing when they wouldn’t naturally be aroused by it without the socialization. I also suspect that that socialization is accomplished by teaching people to see the relevant things as communication, automatically, as a deep heuristic—so that that flash of ankle or breast is taken as a signal that the flasher is sexually receptive, without any thought involved on the flashee’s part.
It makes much more sense to me that thinking that someone was sexually receptive would be arousing than that somehow nearly everyone in a given culture somehow wound up with an attraction to ankles for their own sake, for no apparent reason, and without other cultures experiencing the same thing. There may be another explanation, though—were you considering some other theory?
This seems true to me. No American male would deny that he is attracted to at least one of the big three (breasts, buttocks, face), and attracted for their own sake, and for no apparent reason. (Who instructed them to like those?)
Yet National Geographic is famous for all its bare-breasted photos of women who seem to neither notice nor care, and ditto for the men. The simplest explanation to me is just that cultures have regions of sexiness, with weak ties to biological facts like childbirth, and fetishes are any assessment of sexiness below a certain level of prevalence. Much simpler than all your communication.
It seems I was trying to answer a question that you weren’t asking, then; sorry about that.
Well, the awareness that there are people who have a fetish for X in this culture might make it less surprising that there is a whole culture that finds X sexy.
You’re at least partly right about the communication theory. One big turn on for most people is that someone is sexually interested in them, as communicated by revealing normally hidden body parts. Supposedly in Victorian times legs were typically hidden, so revealing them would be communicative.
Another part of this is that the idea of a taboo is itself sexy, whether or not there is communicative intent. Just the idea of seeing something normally secret or forbidden is arousing to many people.
I’m curious about your example that came up in your life, if you’re willing to share.
I suppose that’s true, though it’s not obvious to me that something would have to start as a fetish to wind up considered sexual by a culture.
This appears to be true—I’ve heard it before, anyway—but it doesn’t make sense, to me, at least as a sexual thing.
Except, as I’m thinking of it now, it does seem to make sense in the context of communicating. Sharing some risky (in the sense that if it were made public knowledge, you’d take a social-status hit) bit of information is a hard-to-fake signal that you’re serious about the relationship, and doing something risky together is a natural way of reciprocating with each other regarding that. It seems like it’d serve more of a pair-bonding purpose than strictly a sexual one, but the two are so intertwined in humans that it’s not really surprising that it’d do both.
My first boyfriend had a thing for walking through puddles while wearing tennis shoes without socks. Pretty boring, as fetishes go.
It wouldn’t. That’s not what I meant: I meant that someone considering Victorian culture, say, where it was allegedly commonplace to find ankles sexy, might not find it too surprising if he knew about people with an ankle fetish in this culture. As in “I know someone who finds ankles sexy in this culture, so it’s not that weird for ankles to be considered sexy in a completely different culture.”
Communicating risky information is more of a pair-bonding thing than a sexual one. I was thinking about seeing something taboo or hidden as sexual. Say it’s in a picture or it’s unintentional, so there’s no communicative intent. A lot of sexuals find it exciting just because it’s “forbidden”. You might be able to relate if you’ve ever been told you can’t do something and that just made you want it more.
That sounds bizarre. I understand assuming that something that a higher-ranking person is allowed to have, that you’re not allowed, is a good thing to try to get. It sounds like the cause and effect part of it what you described is backwards from the way that makes sense to me: ‘This is good because it’s not allowed’, not ‘this is not allowed because it’s good and in limited supply’. What could being wired that way possibly accomplish besides causing you grief?
ETA: I have heard of that particular mental quirk before, and probably even seen it in action. I’m not saying that it’s unusual to have it, just that it seems incomprehensible and potentially harmful, to me.
Well, you’re really asking two questions: why is it useful, and how to comprehend it.
As far as comprehending it… well, I had thought it was a human universal to be drawn to forbidden things. Have you really never felt the urge to do something forbidden, or the desire to break rules? Maybe it’s just because I tend to be a thrill-seeker and a risk-taker.
I think you might be misunderstanding. I don’t make a logical deduction that something is a good thing because it’s not allowed. I do feel emotionally drawn towards things that are forbidden. It’s got nothing to do with “higher-ranking” people.
It’s a pretty natural human urge to go exploring and messing around in forbidden areas. It’s useful because it’s what helps topple dictatorships, encourages scientific inquiry, and stirs up revolutions.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt the need to break a rule just for the sake of doing so. I vaguely remember being curious enough about the supposed draw of doing forbidden things to try it in some minor way, out of curiosity, as a teenager, but it’s pretty obvious how that worked out. (My memory of my teenage years is horrible, so I don’t have details, and could actually be incorrect altogether.) My reaction to rules in general is fairly neutral: I tend to assume that they have (or at least, were intended to have) good reasons behind them, but have no objection to breaking rules whose reasons don’t seem relevant to the issue at hand.
I did understand that you were talking about something different, but that different thing doesn’t make sense.
I am typically only drawn to forbidden things when I do not know why they are forbidden, or know that they are forbidden for stupid reasons and find the forbidden thing a desideratum for other reasons. In the first case, it’s a matter of curiosity—why has someone troubled to forbid me this thing? In the second, it’s just that the thing is already a desideratum and the forbiddance provides no successfully countervailing reason to avoid seeking it.
Like the ‘prestige’ metric that has been discussed recently ‘things that the powerful want to stop me from doing’ is a strong indicator of potential value to someone even though it is intrinsically meaningless. Obviously having this generalised wiring leads them to desire irrelevant or even detrimental things sometimes.
I haven’t been reading that. I’ll go check it out. Maybe it’ll help.