The Xaverian Weekly (St. Francis Xavier University)

ANTIGONISH, N.S. (CUP) –  The term fetish is thrown around a lot. Have a thing for smart people? Must be a fetish.

In reality, fetishisms are complex and controversial. Psychologists define “fetish” as the erotic fixation on objects or non-genital body parts that aren’t conventionally considered sexual in nature.

It is also important to distinguish fetishes from paraphilia, which is an abnormal sexual fixation that has potential to cause distress or serious problems for the paraphilic or others.

While we can all imagine situations where “normal” sexual activity may have similar issues, the defining element is the concept of obsession with an activity considered to be outside of societal sexual norms.

As with any sexual issue, having all manner of scientists engaged in defining these culturally constructed issues can get messy. Fetishes, especially those of paraphilic nature, are classified as “disorders” and a multitude of therapies are available to “cure” them.

While science may make a clinical distinction between harmful fetishes and non-harmful fetishes, the populace doesn’t tend to. But fetishes are more common than you might imagine: psychologists identify upwards of 500 paraphilias and fetishes, which fixate on very nearly everything imaginable.

With all of that variation, and different levels of intensity, it shouldn’t be so easy for us to lump chrematistophilia (experience arousal through being blackmailed into sex), autassassinophilia (sexual arousal due to being in situations in which you may be killed) in a category with balloon fetishism and retifism (shoe fetishes).

Pedophilia, a harmful condition often resulting in some form of victimization, is defined as a paraphilia, unfortunately categorized alongside such behavior as BDSM, an extremely prevalent set of sexual behaviours dependent on consensual and safe practice.

While these would be treated differently in terms of actual clinical practice – and there is undoubtedly some debate over such classifications – the result is often a stigmatization of any and all sexual behaviors that deviate from the norm.

Such definitions simply draw attention to the changing face of sexual normality; the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which provides diagnostic information for psychiatric professionals, listed homosexuality as a paraphilia until 1968.

Even now the manual treats attraction to transsexuals as a paraphilia, although it does so in a rather ambiguous manner.

Stigmatized and taboo, it’s clearly not easy to have a fetish of any sort. However with the advent of the Internet, communities interested in any and all fetishes have emerged and made them much more visible.

Google “balloon fetishism” and you get 329,000 results, the top of which advertise high-resolution balloon porn.

Detrimental, damaging and dangerous as well as quirky and harmless, there’s no denying that fetishes freak people out. They are, however, yet another aspect of variation in human sexual behaviour.

While I am obviously not suggesting that we accept all fetishes as harmless, I do think we have to evaluate our use and stigmatization of the word.

After all, colloquial use often suggests fetishes are simply odd little turn-ons and not the full-blown obsessions psychologists define them as. And we can all identify with that. After all, Christian Louboutin is the only man I need in my life.

If we open our minds a bit we begin to realize that everyone has little sexual quirks. And that shouldn’t scare us – we’re all mad here, at least a little.

Published in Volume 64, Number 10 of The Uniter (November 5, 2009)