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LadyNTrainer -> RE: Female Fetishists? (4/8/2010 9:22:09 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: VaguelyCurious
Quite often men come to the forum, sole kink in hand (and maybe something else in the other hand, but that's a story for a *whole* different thread...). They get shouted down with something along the lines of 'You're a fetishist! Women don't want fetishists, we want relationships!'
Is that really true, or might we just be saying it because it's an easy putdown? Is it a particular quirk of this board that there happens not to be any female fetishists here? (*are* there any female fetishists here?)
If it does exist, how might female fetishism differ from male fetishism? *Is* there a difference-is it a wiring thing?
For starters, at least the early comprehensive surveys on the subject, for whatever they may have been worth, suggest that true fetishism is an almost exclusively male domain. How much this has to do with socialization versus sexually dimorphic brain wiring versus who actually cops to their kinky shit when a sex researcher is asking questions is arguable.
The differential that counts in terms of how a fetishist will be treated socially on an adult site is how they treat others. We've all seen the "I WANT, DO ME, GIMME" approach where someone comes online literally prepared to treat other people like props for their own self-centered gratification. The approach isn't strictly sex-linked; occasionally women do it too. Regardless of the gender of the operator, or what they are demanding from others, the social approach itself is rude and offensive. If you remove sex from the equation entirely and substitute someone coming online to, say, an academic community, demanding in the same clueless manner for others to share their research results, you're likely to see a similar effect in the response they receive. The stranger who comes with his hand out, or in this case with his dick out, is well advised to walk softly and to make friends in the community first.
Fetishes are intrinsically acceptable and normal on an adult site. Social cluelessness and self centered demands to strangers are not likely to go over well in any context, and the fact that it is sexual intimacy that is being demanded is likely to significantly exacerbate the social issues.
Male and female social and communication strategies also tend to be different, though there are cultural variants on the differences. Brusque demand followed by refusal and then partial negotiation is not an uncommon male strategy, but it is a relatively uncommon female one. More typical female strategies involve communication, an offer of cooperation or common interest, and alliance forming prior to making demands. Male strategies are likely to be perceived as childish, unsophisticated or irrational by females, whereas female strategies may be perceived as needless, overly troublesome, too chatty, trivial or irrational by males. These are generalizations, as there are very few individuals who display purely male or purely female communication patterns. But doubtless they do contribute to the social and communication gap that is evident when a male fetishist shows up here and uses the "I WANT, DO ME, GIMME, ME, ME, ME!" strategy.
There are female fetishists, in both the clinical and vernacular usages of the term. The former are probably rare; the latter are actually common as I doubt there are too many women on this site who don't enjoy kinky or fetish activities of one sort or another. The difference is not in their sexual preferences, but with whom they are willing to indulge. Males are less likely to be intensively discriminating about their sexual partners, so they are more often willing to approach by leading with their kink and ignoring interpersonal relationships. They do not appear willing or interested in taking time to get to know a person and determine their fitness and compatibility before engaging in sexual behavior with them. This usually results in truly spectacular failure, since relatively few females are more interested in getting their rocks off in a specific way with a random stranger than they are interested in finding a high quality partner to do it with. Males who do not lead with "Look, I am a high quality partner and I have good social skills" are intrinsically handicapped with females, as a general rule.
To take the analogy a couple of clades back in evolutionary history, this is why male animals carry the burden - sometimes as a physical part of them - of making visible displays of their health, fitness, strength and willingness to exert energy and spend scarce resources to please the female. Males want to mate; females want to mate selectively. The fundamental male strategy is "if it moves, stick my dick in it". The fundamental female strategy is "Avoid mating until I am convinced he is worthy". Obviously this is a gross oversimplification when it comes to describing the complex and highly polymorphic courtship strategies of Homo sapiens, but it's still relevant to what we're looking at here.
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