The Sexual Psychology of Fetishes: A Dissertation

Alright alright alright, I don’t really know how to introduce this topic in any way that won’t make me giggle, but I’m getting into my theory on the sexual psychology of fetishes. We’ll do a brief overview of introductory psych, including introducing some big names like FREUD and dabbling in our favorite Greek Mythology with Oedipus. (Did I just give you flashbacks to high school history class? Good.) Then, we’ll pass the seven levels of the candy cane forest…past the sea of swirly twirly gumdrops… jk but I will speak anecdotally on my own information both from the unfortunate instances I’ve tried online dating and my personal private actual real life–in which men feel very comfortable telling me their sexual fantasies and fetishes. I’m not here to judge. I’m a scientist baby, I am FASCINATED by some of you. As long as you don’t creep ME out and direct it towards me in gross demeanors, learning about the strange facets of humanity’s sexual variance is truly the 8th wonder of the world.  A Brief Psych Background Psychology is an emerging field in western medicine and particularly American medicine, as our narrative and focus on psychology involves conflation of biological warfare and military development. *The CIA and geopolitical bias surrounding the Cold War and framing of the USSR, Eugenics, and democracy versus communism has entered the chat.* However, it can be traced back to ancient Greece in 400-500 B.C. (Think Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and great philosophers who pondered the mind).  Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the pioneer of psychoanalysis, introduced theories of psychosexual development and sexually confusing relationships based on parental figures.  In the 1890’s, a Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, used dog salivation to denote “Pavlovian”, or classical, conditioning showed two unrelated stimuli could easily (and relatively simply) become linked to produce a “learned response”.  Operant Conditioning, developed by behaviorist B.F Skinner, utilized external, observable behavioral causes over internal thoughts and motivation. It involves associative learning, in which the association between a behavior and consequence (which can be negative or positive) occurs.  You truly cannot tell me if the porn industry was dominated by women we wouldn’t already have conditioned men to cook, to unload the dishwasher, to put the toilet seat down, to clean the house, any basic household tasks or emotional support for sexual favors or interest. This is a simple technique I use on boyfriends. I reward or repeat desirable behaviors until they become second-nature. In society, lack of accountability with reference to a lot of issues, but definitely violence towards women, is likely the reason it continues. We are operantly conditioning men to not believe there are consequences for their (potentially dangerous) actions which harm others.  As a reminder, before we get into it–never fake an orgasm. The men do not need to think they “did a good job” if they did not. This is the participation trophy of sex. Cut it out. Sex doesn’t “always” have to end in orgasms of one party or the other, either. It doesn’t need to be some finish line or end goal if it’s not happening and you don’t need to feel guilty for it.  Neurotransmitters are chemical substances that are released at the end of nerve fibers because of nerve impulses diffusing across a synapse (aka: enough stimulation has been reached for action potential propagation). These are the chemicals that relay messages throughout our bodies regarding nerve sensat