7 Cups 5th Birthday Day 4: 5 Facts about Fetishes

This year, for 7 Cups's 5th birthday, the Sexual Health team wants to share 5 facts for 5 days about different Sexual Health topics!

Next up: Fetishes

1. There are 2 types of fetishes these being inanimate and animate, meaning the difference between something about a person or an object a lot of people who have an inanimate fetish can become aroused from just seeing pictures of the things they have a fetish for. And a lot of people who have an animate fetish can become aroused from just behaviors and action of people, such as someone who has a fetish about someone being dominant over them could be aroused from being told to do things

2. After a survey from an erotic retailer Ann Summers they found the result that 75% of people claimed to have at least one fetish, with 61% of those people say although they can admit and talk about it they feel that it is stigmatised. This is surprising seeing as this survey would suggest a majority of people do have at least one fetish.

3. A sexual fetish can be described as an attraction with sexual connotations to any object, body part, peice of clothing, ect. This definition makes it a lot easier to think of a fetish as not being weird as the stigma around it would suggest. For example people being attracted to a woman's breasts as something sexually arousing can be called a fetish which most people would say is not weird.

4. According to surveys taken the most common thing people would both claim as a fetish and something they like the idea of or would participate in is BDSM (a term used to describe bondage/discipline, dominant/submissive, and sadism/masochism) which in recent times has become more and more accepted, even being shown in popular literature/movie franchise 50 shades of grey so if you are someone who enjoys this or the idea of it you can rejoice! in the knowledge that there are lots of other people out there who also feel the same way.

5. Fetishes tend to start in childhood and adolescence for a majority of people and last a lifetime usually. So this means when you experiment and get used to the hormones and how you react to them during puberty will shape what you like later on in life. This is more easily observed in men over woman, with men more commonly having fetishes in general.

Resources:

https://beforeplay.org/exploring-fetishes/

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/fetishes-and-dsm-v-when-is-kink-mental-health-issue-0829138

https://www.ncsfreedom.org