Are some fetishes gender specific?

[steve25805 126,021]

The reason why I ask this is that I got asked in work by a female colleague in the canteen - as were several other male colleagues - if I had any sexual interest in feet. Some sort of survey apparently. But only the men were being asked, the assumption being that women never have foot fetishes.

I thought about this afterwards, and indeed have never heard of a woman being sexually interested in feet. I had previously always assumed that every imaginable fetish would have adherents from both genders. Clearly our pee fetish does. But as far as I know only men are foot fetishists.

So perhaps some fetishists, notably the body part ones, are men only?

And are there any fetishes that only interest women?

From all I have seen and heard I think women are more into bondage than men.

And even with the pee fetish there are certain biases, I think. The ladies seem to be more into wetting than the men, insofar as I can tell, and more into desperation too. Whilst the full on watersports, peeing on each other, gig seems to attract more male fans than female ones. But these are just impressions, so could be wrong.

Edited October 12, 2022 by steve25805

[Peenicks 864]

Content Warning: Discussion of sexual violence & sexual trauma

The most common conclusion I've found from studies examining fetishes is that because men, on average, tend to have higher sex drives than women that therefore makes them more susceptible to developing kinks or paraphilia in general.

Additionally there's a substantive correlation between sexual trauma and the development of particular fetishes/kinks/etc. later in life. This is not to say that those kinks are a symptom of mental illness but rather that most if not all kinks are informed by interests or events that occured in the developmental stages of one's life, and an event that is impactful or traumatic is likely to inform future sexual development a great deal.

This does, to some degree, explain why certain paraphilia would be more common amongst women, as they are oft disproportionately affected by sexual violence. I myself am not a victim of sexual violence nor trauma so I cannot speak to their experiences, so I encourage the victims to speak up if they feel comfortable and fill in the probably large gaps in my and others' understanding.

 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Peenicks

[oliver2 4,418]

1 hour ago, Peenicks said:

The most common conclusion I've found from studies examining fetishes is that because men, on average, tend to have higher sex drives than women that therefore makes them more susceptible to developing kinks or paraphilia in general.

Oh, is that why? (I’d heard that guys tended to have more kinks, though not a suggestion of the cause)

Fifty Shades of Grey sold extremely well for some reason, so, well, that seems like a good fact to throw at anyone claiming it’s only men who have kinks 🙃

COWORKER: Hey! Are you into feet?

ME: [thinks: only if someone’s just peed on them] No

 

[steve25805 126,021]

1 hour ago, Peenicks said:

Additionally there's a substantive correlation between sexual trauma and the development of particular fetishes/kinks/etc. later in life.

I can only speak for myself here. I have no recollection of any sexual trauma from my formative years and have no idea why I developed such a powerful pee fetish.

I can remember feeling too embarrassed to ask the teacher if I could go to the toilet when very young and would just hold at any cost. When I did finally get to a toilet the relief was immense and indeed a pleasure for that reason. Could that have been a factor? Don't know. But I have always been far more interested in females peeing than in myself doing so. No idea where it came from. There was no sudden eureka moment that I can recall that gave birth to my fetish. Been interested in pee for as long as I can remember, since well before I knew anything at all about sex.

The closest thing to a eureka moment was when I made the discovery that my sister had been peeing on her bedroom carpet. My interest in girls peeing on carpets seems to have been triggered at this time. But my fascination with peeing in a sexual way - though I didn't understand it's true nature in my younger years - long predated that.

I do though understand that past incidences or traumas can act as a trigger for some people. And not necessarily always traumas either. The triggers for a fetish can quite often be quite comparatively benign. For example, I saw a documentary once where a foot fetishist male described how his interest was triggered by a barefoot lady with painted toenails when he was very young. He recalled being fascinated by the sight in ways he did not then understand and the fetish grew from there. There was no actual trauma.

But I do understand that past sexual trauma could act as a trigger for some

Edited October 12, 2022 by steve25805

[steve25805 126,021]

6 minutes ago, oliver2 said:

Fifty Shades of Grey sold extremely well for some reason, so, well, that seems like a good fact to throw at anyone claiming it’s only men who have kinks

For some reason - whilst it seems true that only men become foot fetishists as far as I know, there do seem to be some types of fetish interests that interest women more than men. And the sort of bondage, dominance-orientated light S&M stuff in that book does seem to be a typical example.

But we should be cautious. There might simply be a female bias in favour of the medium rather than the actual activity described. It might for example be the case that women prefer reading erotica whilst men prefer watching it. I have heard this idea being put forward before.

[Kupar 13,339]

I reckon there is still serious academic work to be done here @steve25805. Most academic work on kink and gender is either focused on BDSM or is gender-studies-based perspective of kink that doesn't really provide either data or theory to support an answer to your question.

However, there is something reported in a consumer magazine: https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/foot-fetishes

“While both men and women can be sexually drawn to feet, men appear much more likely to have this interest than women,” he tells us. “For example, when I broke my data down by gender identity, 19.5% of men said they’d had a sexual fantasy involving feet compared to 8% of women.” 

 

[Takashi96 1,076]

As a guy who has one, I'm extremely interested in the behavior of paraphilias. Foot fetishes fascinate me because they're so common. And they also seem to be relatively acceptable compared to other conditions. They also seem very gender specific. I've never heard of a woman having a foot fetish, though admittedly I haven't put much time into researching it. 

Paraphilias seem to disproportionately effect men for the same reason autism spectrum disorders do. It's basically a product of how male brains evolved to hyper focus over time. This is especially true of the more visually oriented fetishes like voyeurism. 

But like ASD, it could be a matter of fetishes presenting differently in women. And thus going largely undetected. It makes sense that women would have more cerebral fetishes. Or at least present less visually fixated symptoms. One clue might be that women consume erotica at disproportionally high levels compared to men. Still, I suspect even if fetishes were more easily detectable in women, the rates would still be uneven compared to men. 

[gldenwetgoose 21,487]

Ball busting ???     Cuckolding ?  and usually in the media BDSM is portrayed as a Femme dom and often a middle aged, balding sub.   I'm being a little flippant there.

 

I'm sure this has been the subject of much study and discussion - but I do tend to think there's an aspect of conditioning between what's ok for a bloke and what's of for a lady.

Maybe that's not the case with the current Gen Z and in the future.  But certainly everyone older has grown up with that whole 'a woman who sleeps around is a slut, and a man who does is a stud' harmful attitude - and that's just one attitude of it.    Certainly that attitude is rife in the mainstream near-vanilla porn industry with it's frankly gross clip titles...   'MILF' but never 'DILF' or 'GILF'  (Dad or Guy - I had to ask last week when I heard it) and how many clips brand the female a slut?

I think there is a thing where guys would be less open to talking about their kink between themselves for fear of being laughed out of the bar, but use of porn is encouraged and hence (like me and many others) we find that porn exists for our kink, we embrace it and delve deeper into it.

Then also I feel that a lot of society presents a very different attitude towards ladies, where Cosmopolitan articles and 50 Shades presents a view of what 'is acceptable for a lady'. The whole product range of Anne Summers (UK adult clothing and toy chain), Lovehoney and the like all market towards ladies.  That and the Chippendale culture of a few decades ago,  all creating a boundary of exploration which is a lot more high street and can be openly discussed - but has limits of decency.

I'm being hugely general there - and probably very sexist.   Clearly any of our members do not care for boundaries - we are all peefans and we all celebrate together.