Behind every fetishist there is a person

The third Friday in January is International Fetish Day. This day was created in 2008 to raise awareness of the fetish scene as well as to support the BDSM community and has been celebrated in January since then. Fetish: abnormal, perverted, bizarre or exciting, divers, liberating? The word fetish comes from the Latin ‘facticius’ and means ‘made by art’. In a figurative sense, a man-made thing that they believe has power over them. Fetishes in their original meaning are objects to which human or superhuman powers are ascribed, e.g. an amulet, a statue or a totem. In the religious sense, fetishism has nothing to do with eroticism and sensual pleasures but refers to the belief in supernatural personal or impersonal powers that live in certain objects and their worship as sacred objects.

In a sexual context, a fetish is an object associated with desire. Fetishism shifts interest from the human subject to a part of the body, an attribute, a piece of clothing or an object. Fetishism is not necessarily to be equated with BDSM, but the boundaries are often fluid or disappear completely. For example, when it comes to the stimulus to slip into another role. A distinction is usually made between smell, taste and other fetishisms that focus on hearing, seeing and touching sexual objects. Much can become a fetish that can be perceived with our senses.

Fetishes often develop in childhood through experiences or key stimuli that set the course for later sexual behavior and are fully expressed and recognizable during puberty. The best example of this is combining sexual feelings of happiness or a socially pleasant situation with certain sensual arrangements. Thus, the predisposition to fetishism is a coincidence that can neither be influenced nor appropriated. In a sense, we are all endowed with characteristics of fetishism that seem harmless as preferences, such as a particular hair color or clothing. Fetishes are in the truest sense as diverse as we humans are. Basically, fetishes and sex do not necessarily have to belong together. If you combine both, it can be all the more fulfilling. Fetishism teaches us that there is basically no such thing as ‘normal’ sexuality, but only roughly subdivided areas of drive orientation, in which we will find ourselves if we value exploring our own sexuality.

Fetishism is not a fad, although the fashion world likes to quote it figuratively. In history we repeatedly find epochs in which the natural body was not given too much importance, rather clothing was a playground for the erotic gaze. From the hair trim to the fan to the foot, everything could become an object of desire and thus a fetish. The baroque, for example, with its hoop skirts, garters, knee-high leather boots and powdered wigs, must have been a sensual delight for every fetishist. Mass media repeatedly make explicit sexual preferences (“50 Shades of Gray”) seem interesting, remove the taboo and thereby demystify the fetish itself.

Behind each of us fetishists is a person. Someone who accepts his preferences, has overcome his own fears and prejudices and lives out his passions with pleasure and honesty. However, we fetishists do not want to be reduced to our predilections and everyone determines the extent of fetish in their lives themselves. The person we believe to be our self exists only for ourselves. Every person we meet, have a relationship with, or have eye contact with on the street has a different version of us in their mind, which is probably way more harmless than our own. Fetishists have wants and needs that can be very strong. The fetish scene may be composed of a wide variety of people, attitudes and practices, but at the same time unites common perspectives and close relationships. There are more and more events that combine everyday activities with fetish, e.g. the “Classic Meets Fetish” concert every year at Folsom Europe in Berlin or fetish pub crawls in many cities. People in fetish clothing break through previously given boundaries and norms. The organizers and organizers within our community have taken on a social task: That fetishists escape social control and can live out their sexuality with all its unique forms and possibilities – liberated and happy. We all should appreciate this task and develop it further.