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.