Is Fetishization Inherently Bad?
Spoiler: No.
What does it mean to “fetishize” something? Breaking down the word, we’re given only that it is to transform something (suffix: “-ize”) into a fetish. Every single person on earth has a fetish and how they manifest is as unique as we are. Your fetish might be something that has been socially ingrained in you such as types of shoes, skimpy underwear, or larger breasts. Your fetish might be something that developed all by itself through some (sometimes unknown to you) process such as cassocks, feet, uniforms, or clowns. Some fetishes are a result of unconscious bias based on stereotyping: things that manifest as oft-deemed problematic preferences such as ones based on racial stereotypes, gender stereotypes, or sexual orientation stereotypes.
Fetishes are totally normal. Having a strange fetish is, in the scope of human sexuality and possibility, like being born with a nose. It’s kinda weird if you don’t have one and if you think you don’t, take a longer and harder look at the things you value when it comes to not just your sexuality but how you perceive the world around you. Do you find blue eyes attractive? Do you wish you had them? Technically, that’s fetishization: holding an aspect of attraction in higher regard than another serves to place that aspect as an object of reverence—a fetish. Is it problematic to have a fetish for blue eyes? That answer is complex because it’s not about the fetish, it’s about behavior patterns that might be associated with that an aspect of that fetish.
I think we can all agree that someone hiding a camera under a person’s bed to take pictures of their feet as they took off their shoes and socks would be a gross invasion of privacy. No matter that it wasn’t their genitals and you couldn’t see their face—taking pictures of any part of someone’s body is just creepy. The same can be said of an online activity called “Fetish Mining” in which people will hold seemingly innocuous conversations with unsuspecting social media users in order to get pictures or information relating to their fetish for sexual gratification. Yuck! Imagine finding out that you sent a totally innocent picture of your nail polish to some person just to find out they have a collection of photos of people’s hands they use for you-know-what! Fetishization in itself is innocuous, the concept of finding nail polish sexy is a completely normal and innocent little sexual quirk. So what about this scenario of fetishization is wrong?
The introduction of a subject whose consent was not on offer.
Forming a fetish is just a natural and unique experience of being a sexual human being. Even people who aren’t explicitly sexual can have fetishes (a remarkable number of asexuals have a blood fetish that really revs up their libidos). The difference between a problematic fetish and regular fetish is in the fulfillment of that fetish. There’s a huge difference between having a blood fetish that manifests in murder and a blood fetish that manifests in watching horror movies like they’re pornos. Both of those manifestations began with the fetishization of blood, but only one of them is actually harmful due to the introduction of a subject whose consent was not on offer—i.e. a victim.
Does fetishization require a victim? Absolutely not. Obviously, we’ve discussed several types of fetishes that are distinctly victimless. Even those that are based on human attributes can be victimless as long as those fetishes do not result in problematic behavior toward a particular person or set of people. The latter of that statement naturally requires some elaboration as it can be tough to determine when you should be confronting your biases and when you should simply be indulging in your fetish. To make a frank statement franker: Your job is to make sure you are never directly harming a human being while indulging in your fetish. Watching a porno where the main character is raping his step sister while she’s half stuck in the dryer: great. Actually raping your step sister while she’s half stuck in the dryer: not great. Beating your meat and sending tips to Only Fans accounts of Asian women: great. Treating Asian women like commodities and attributing to them stereotypes in your relationships with them and how you talk about them in your social circles: not great. Drooling over Idris Elba: great. Treating Black men as though they’re hyper-masculine idealized versions of men who have less feelings and more cock: not great.
Harm can only be done to people who exist in the real world. Keeping your fetish a fetish and not a (nonconsensual) practice is what marks the difference between harmless indulgence and predatory malfeasance. Someone stumbling over your fetish is not your problem. Your fetish’s existence is none of their business. How you treat them in normal everyday life is their business. Finding a Nazi uniform sexy is a fetish. Idealizing Nazism and espousing white supremacist ideology is a practice. The difference between those two things is staggeringly large but because of the shocking nature of Nazi imagery, they are conflated often. Nazi uniform fetishists don’t find Nazis sexy in the same way that a member of the furry community doesn’t find a real life dog sexy—it’s a fantasy that happens to include something that makes the mind tick.
What fetishization comes down to is often just differing opinions on what the word itself means. It’s easy to fall into the hole of “What I’m doing is not fetishization because I’m not [fill in some dubious act here]” when in fact you already have fetishized that thing or attribute, you simply have succeeded in not making your fetish into a practice. Fetishization isn’t inherently bad. The objectification and commodification of real people (or animals) is the problematic aspect of some fetishization and that’s where you’re going to run into folks assuming that one means the other. Fetishization is often misunderstood as the act of stripping away inherent meaning and soul from something or someone in order to sexualize it or hold it in a higher regard but that’s not always the case—consider the fetishization of youth. A lot of the time we fetishize youth because we remember the trials and concerns and tension of being young. There’s nobody out there who hasn’t been young and who doesn’t understand the precise human angst and anxieties surrounding that state of being; so the fetishization of youth is usually intrinsically connected to the humanity of youth. The objectification and commodification of youth comes in when a predator primarily targets real life children to abuse sexually because the concept of youth and child-like being is separated from the humanity of real life individual people. That has nothing to do with a fetish—it has to do with objectification and commodification and that type of harm can only happen in real life to real human children.
Every so often someone will tell me that harm is being caused to real people because of attitudes spread through pornography. My response is this: If your attitude toward real human beings can be altered by pornography, you have bigger problems than just pornography. The inability to compartmentalize your fetish material versus your attitudes and behaviors regarding human beings is a huge indicator that you need to sit down and work through your biases. Of course, this is contingent upon your capacity for self-awareness and whether or not those engaging with you about your fetishes are doing so in good faith. Though not fetish-centric, a good start for examining your unconscious bias is the book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. R. Banaji. This text is well-written for the layman and explains how unconscious bias manifests and most importantly that you personally have not chosen them—a bit like how you didn’t choose your fetish. If pornography is able to alter your perceptions of real human beings, that would mean that all media would have the capacity to do that which we know very well to be unsubstantiated by evidence (see: every major study done on videogames increasing violent behavior). This would also mean that all of the positive messaging in media would be able to erase negative bias, which we also know to be false.
People are far too concerned with criticizing art based on whether the "wrong people" will enjoy it or get the "wrong idea" from it. What we really need is not death of the author but Death Of The Audience -@mechanicalkurt on Twitter
Having a fetish is a normal part of life. You can’t convince sex-negative people that your fetish is unproblematic, they need to grapple with their own fetishes and their own internalized shame over them. Make sure you’re not making their problem into your problem. Worrying about whether or not someone with a foot fetish is going to get a boner over the shoe-less cartoon fairies in Fern Gully isn’t activism and no amount of yelling is ever going to change that. The folks who are going on about things that clearly don’t have any bearing on reality are the ones living in a fantasy land—not you. Fetishization isn’t a bad thing. Not inherently. Coupling fetishization with problematic behaviors that directly impact real, living human beings? Yeah that’s where we gotta draw the line.
(Real Person Fiction is not direct impact, for the record.)
Go leave a nice comment on somebody’s fan fiction.