Abnormal Psych Fetish Q&A...

[The Mute Poet]

***Disclaimer: I wrote this to entertain/be informative, not to scare/give anyone misconceptions. The views expressed below are based on the relatively meagre data available in the psychological community about fetishism and as such shouldn't even be considered fully applicable to our particular quirk. That said, consider not reading any further if you're uppity about how "outsiders" may view the fetish. ***

Alright, so I had a bit of a weird experience today. As the semester's winding down for us at school, most don't make the effort to attend our last couple of classes in each course (preferring by now, to live or die by the final ), but I was feeling strangely motivated today at 9am and decided to drag myself in to see what was cracking...

Weeeeelllll, turns out, my Abnormal Pyschology professor had decided to leave the "Sexual Disorders" section as our last topic for discussion, and that our class of normally 60-70 students had thinned to a meagre 20-odd (so pretty intimate setting in such a big room ).

Anyway, one of the main branches of this section is fetishism, which I found immensely interesting if only because I was interested in seeing what "they" had to say about us . It started off pretty calmly with everyone zoned out as per usual, until the professor began outlining that most fetishists do not suffer because of their condition (as actually many love the "extra" turnon) but that "normal" people who become aware of their acts likely would, and that this fact is incorporated into the diagnosis of most clinical cases.

I of course took issue with this (naturally thinking of us ) and raised my hand in front of the class to ask whether a clinical diagnosis would still be made for a "relatively harmless fetish that most people wouldn't see as obscene". See, at this point I thought I'd just get a straight "well, from my experience..." answer from him, but he kinda quirked a smile at me, paused and tossed back "well... like what?" Needless to say, that SERIOUSLY threw me for a loop (especially since I'd been the first to express any interest to this point) and I'm sure it took me a full 30 seconds of my brain screaming "ANYTHING BUT SNEEZING!!!" before I came up with "...teddy bears?" (hey, pretty good considering, I think ).

He then went on to say that as long as the situation was at the core of the person's sexual experience it would still be diagnosable but that the person in question would be alot less likely to have adapted better socially than some other forms (ie: voyeurism, exhibitionism, sadism). The cool thing was, after my question, a ton of people chimed in with all theirs (one guy even asking about being aroused by the color red) and soooo many questions came up that I smirkingly answered in my head...

Q - "Can they get turned on by other things?"

Teacher's Answer - "In 50 percent of the cases it's possible to be aroused without any use or fantasising about the object/situation in question, yes"

Q - "Is the arousal response the same in females as it is in males?"

A - "We just don't have enough data to know..."

Q - "What is the most common fetish?"

A - "By far feet/shoes"

Q - "Given the choice, will most fetishists choose guarenteed vanilla sex, or sex involving their fetish?"

A - "Almost exclusively sex involving their fetish"

Q - "Why is this even a diagnosable condition, isn't it just some random sexual quirk?"

A - "It can be just that, but there are levels where it can become the sole and driving focus of these individuals' lives; to the point where many have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of work just to set themselves up with situations where they can satisfy their fetish"

Q - "Why do we know so little about fetishes"

A - "Well... it's a fact that only about 8% of cases seek treatment voluntarily, most people love having a fetish, and feel no need to be otherwise"

All that said, sneezing fetishism seems to be an exception to a couple of the general rules that were talked about in class. It seems that alot of us have a pretty decent level of social functioning (as in I don't think 70% of us have never been in any sort of intimate relationship whatsoever because of preoccupation with our fetish), as we seem to usually integrate our fetish into relationships rather than replace them with it. And also, the professor said that female fetishists of every kind were "very, very rare" to the point where he'd never met one, heard of anyone who'd met one, read any scientific literature about them or found any data able to even give estimates of exactly what their apparently small percentage even is. I'd say we have a roughly 50/50 split here, and maybe even more girls than guys so... go us

[Kiwifruit]

Awesome xD

Q - "Can they get turned on by other things?"

Teacher's Answer - "In 50 percent of the cases it's possible to be aroused without any use or fantasising about the object/situation in question, yes"

Only 50%!? Weeeeird...sounds almost like it's not defined as a fetish until it's an obsession...

he kinda quirked a smile at me, paused and tossed back "well... like what?" Needless to say, that SERIOUSLY threw me for a loop (especially since I'd been the forst to express any interest to this point) and I'm sure it took me a full 30 seconds of my brain screaming "ANYTHING BUT SNEEZING!!!" before I came up with "...teddy bears?" (hey, pretty good considering, I think ).

[shy guy]

wow, that was facinating! I once read the sections on fetishes in a psychiatry textbook, but it didn't go into anywhere near that much detail. thanks for sharing this with us!

[Trillium]

Very interesting -- I'd have liked to have been in your class. Although I would have flat-out suggested sneezing as a fetish, to see what he would say.

I also had to laugh at the prof's statement that female fetishists are very rare. Perhaps we just do not reveal ourselves!

[Sneesee]

Very interesting -- I'd have liked to have been in your class. Although I would have flat-out suggested sneezing as a fetish, to see what he would say.

I also had to laugh at the prof's statement that female fetishists are very rare. Perhaps we just do not reveal ourselves!

Ha ha ha, I would have flat out said sneezing, too, just to see what would happen next!

Also, and this is just from my observations, I think most females tend to keep their kink to themselves. At least, a lot of my non-fetish friends seem to. Even just bringing up things of a sexual nature causes a lot of my female friends to squirm. So maybe we are more tight-lipped about it!

[zneeze]

I would have mentioned sneezing too, but not by itself; I mean, saying something like, "Well, for example, tickling, or sneezing or teddy bears." (Probably also saying "or sneezing or" really fast )

This is exactly why I want to take a class in sexual psychology/abnormal psychology/something like that in college. I just want to have a fetish discussion with unsuspecting classmates and a professor who likely knows nothing about the topic because he doesn't have a fetish

[count tiszula]

All very interesting, and shows essentially how little "experts" understand about sexuality, since they are only concerned with utterly extreme conditions which can be seen as diseases or indeed criminal.

Of course you have to stretch definitions even to include our interest as a fetish; firstly used only for a sexual view of inanimate objects, say teddy bears or hankies; then extended to parts of the body, raising the obvious question, why are breasts, mouths and ears normal, but buttocks, noses and feet wicked perversions? In fact is the recent description of our interest as mucophilia some ham-handed attempt to ally it with coprophilia and the like [and thus damn it]?

The bewildered admission that sneeze fandom is harmless and everyone who has it enjoys it is actually a little alarming, because experts do like to persecute those who have no harmful characteristics and therefore are unlikely to have a very militant defence when someone suddenly discovers that they have got to be punished.

And the idea that no women are fetishists is strange to us, but I have to admit that until I found this place I had assumed the same myself; but then I was at a single-sex school.... And after all, since Wikipedia has decided that we don't exist, despite having a link here, who are we to argue with them?

[CarellFan]

Thanks for sharing the details of your class! I find fetishes, especially their origin (as in, is it genetic or environmental factors at play?) to be fascinating, but I am also continually confused by what the psychological community says about them, and this prof certainly did nothing to resolve my confusion! Maybe in their terms an obsession with sneezing would be considered a kink instead of a fetish... though I don't really understand why they find a need to make a distinction between fetishes and kinks in the first place... (more confusion!!)

[gryffin]

Well, it could be worse - we came out of this pretty well! But again, a professor of Abnormal Psychology (!) must have seen worse stuff.

We should send that guy a letter with the forum stats...

[Demosthenes]

How about this...I actually posted about it...In one of my psych classes a couple of years ago in college, the professor actually used a sneezing fetish as the example for fetishism and put excerpts from our forum up on the screen....And then proceeded to read the posts....I was praying that no one notice my face flushing!

Hmm... that seems pretty coincidental. Maybe he knew someone who was a sneeze fetishist?

[littlesneezer18]

Intriguing ways to describe fetishes..... I'm with Mute and would not have said sneezing, but kudos to all of you braver than myself!

[Bombast]

When we were outed on that FOX show, I found it interesting that the male host and one of the female guests were clearly repulsed by it while the other man and woman didn't think it was that big of a deal. The male guest said the fetish sounded pretty tame compared to others and wondered out loud what the sneeze of the disgusted woman would be like (she didn't think that remark was funny) and the other lady shared that she was a multiple sneezer. So some so-called "normal" people would be hung up on it and some not but I think that says more about them than us.

[Guest )Swing(]

Wow, really interesting. Would be awesome to be in your class. Psychology at worst is usually interesting anyhow.

I have to say my instinct would be that I'd have given sneezing as a "relatively harmless fetish that most people wouldn't see as obscene". But it's easy to say that sat here. It'd have been fascinating to find-out how "harmless" that would be regarded as and how people would react to the suggestion, but it's very possible I'd not have the nerve to use the example. I've always been careful about drawing attention to myself.