Category Archives: Shame

Paraphilia

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The following is an excerpt from my personal blog, in which I talk about paraphilias. Paraphilias are sometimes categorized as “fetishes,” though such is not always or even necessarily the case. Fetishes do not have to be sexual in nature, truly. Further, many of the following paraphilias are included in the DSM (a code book for psychiatric disorders), which I do not necessarily agree with.

A very short list…as an example of things that do turn people on. This is about sex education, and there are areas that few people know much about at all. By “not assuming action,” I mean that the turn on does not indicate that the person turned on by the fixation ever actually acts upon thing that turns them on.

Name                      What the turn on is (and this does not assume action)

Acrotomophilia:       Amputees

Agalmatophilia:       Statues and mannequins

Asphyxiophilia:        Asphyxiation or strangulation

Autoplushophilia:    The image of one’s self in the form of a plush or anthropomorphized animal.

Coprophilia:            Feces; also known as scat, scatophilia

Dendrophilia:          Trees

Emetophilia:            Vomit

Feederism:              Erotic eating, feeding, and weight gain

Formicophilia:         Being crawled on by insects

Forniphilia :            Turning a human being into a piece of furniture

Hybristophilia:         Criminals, particularly for cruel or outrageous crimes

Klismaphilia:            Enemas, either giving or having

Lactophilia:             Lactation, nursing

Menophilia:             Menstruation

Narratophilia:          Talking dirty, listening to obscene words/stories

Objectophilia:          Pronounced emotional desire towards specific inanimate objects (as mentioned earlier)

Odaxelagnia:            Biting or being bitten

Paraphilic infantilism: Dressing or being treated like a baby

Partialism:                 Specific, non-genital body parts

Technosexuality:       Sexual attraction to robots, or people dressed as robots

Trichophilia:              Hair

Troilism:                   Cuckoldism, watching one’s partner have sex with someone else

Vorarephilia:            The idea of eating or being eaten by others; sometimes swallowed whole

The purpose of this list is to introduce realms of sexual “deviations” (in this sense, sexual fixations outside of what is typically considered within the “norm”) ~ and is not intended to belittle anyone who is into any of the above things (the list is nowhere near comprehensive, it is a truly tiny sampling). Nor am I suggesting that I personally find any of these paraphilias “positive” or “negative” — just that they, among many, many other sexual fixations, exist.

There are several paraphilias that -acted upon- are, of course, illegal. But many, if not most, fall into strictly the realm of fantasy. We live in a society where normatives –and especially sexual normatives– are part of a larger concern about repression and shame. An article I read yesterday about prosecuting for thought crimes is what brought the subject to the surface, and caused me to stop and write a little bit about various things people get off on. For the complete entry about this topic, please feel free to visit my personal blog entry on paraphilias.

Questions about Sex Education in American Public Schools

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Happy Monday! 🙂

This morning, I want to throw a thought out for consideration.

I am, personally, a huge advocate for comprehensive sex education in public school, and starting earlier than 5th or 6th grade — but I know that idea makes a lot of parents squick out. With 30 out of 50 states accepting Title V funding for abstinence education, the fact that many parents/voters seem to “want” abstinence-based (AOUM and abstinence-plus) sex education taught to their kids…though I suspect not many really know what is actually taught in abstinence-based sex ed. More importantly, I know most parents do not know what is not taught in abstinence-based sex ed. Nor do most parents know the history of AOUM sex education, much less how much of a battleground topic it is in Washington D.C.

Schools across the country, desperate for funding, accept Title V funding, even if it means they know their students do not receive complete (or even necessarily accurate) information. There are a lot of politics surrounding this topic, and the reality is that abstinence-based sex education has its roots in religious ideology, which is something I will bring up for discussion in a future entry.

For today, I want to ask this question. If all states accepted appropriate funding for ALL education, to include sex education…and if all states’ *public* schools stuck with comprehensive sex education (minus all the gender-focused religiously-rooted and shame-based loaded language), what would be the problem for *religious* parents who wanted to teach their kids –at home– what their religious beliefs are related to sex? …rather than pushing a religious ideology via sex education onto all kids, regardless of home-based religious beliefs? What would be wrong with giving the parents the choice to opt their kids out of comprehensive sex ed, if they hold such strong objections to it?

Why are we dealing with this sort of sex-negative education in the 21st century? Particularly in the face of the United States having the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy and STI transmission across the teen and young adult populations in the industrialized world?

To provide a contrast…the Netherlands has among the lowest rates of unplanned teen pregnancy and STI transmission in the world…they provide comprehensive sex education at very early ages…and there are PLENTY of religious people there. For people who truly want to reduce teen pregnancies, abortions, and STI transmission, why is the question of comprehensive sex education actually even a question at all?

Thoughts?