English Version | Fetishizers from around the world, unite in parafilia

Don't you find it strange that, in these times when a new gender identity appears every day, fetishes continue to be looked down on, to have to be satisfied in a secret way, on the margins of society? Don't you think that freedom, this greater good, when applied to such an important component of our daily life as sex, still has a long way to go?

Illustration by Apollonia Saintclair
Illustration by Apollonia Saintclair

How would you know what a podophilist (someone with an interest of sexual arousal caused by feet) like me, who suffers with the onset of winter... all those long toes that were so shamelessly revealed during the summer, oh heavenly nudity, are now hidden away, away from the eyes of those who only look for a little beauty to add color to their days, inside booties of doubtful taste and warm socks. The coldest season of the year is the good manners brigade, which is not attended by any sophistication. Not only the feet, but also the neck, implicit in scarves, the line between that and the shoulder, a steeper collarbone, the ankles, and often even the hands, are gone. Notice that nobody mentioned legs and necklines, no! A fetishist would never be so vulgar, coarse and crude. A man who targets nadir and breast volume sees, in the woman, an object of his pleasure. He who delights in the beauty that resides in the small details would never objectify a sunrise or the murmuring of a flock of starlings in a spring sky. On the other hand, I don't agree that podolatry should be considered a fetish. And not only because I include myself in this definition, of which I am not ashamed, even with so many expressions that hide a condemning "Look, another crazy maniac" that I so often glimpse.

Freud explains, "A baby is a polymorphous pervert." By this he meant that all minimally healthy children are capable of taking pleasure in multiple ways under multiple types of caresses in multiple areas of the body. This is one of those statements that would earn him, today, the most persecutory epithets. Not in the libertarian 20th century, which, although it seems like yesterday, was a time when there were no social networks with invitations for swing nights and, nevertheless, it was prolific in establishments where the wildest desires could be fulfilled without the slightest glance, full of veiled condemnation. Because that is what this is all about. Sexual freedom is obviously, and in the first place, about being okay with it. Hence the neopanoply of gender identities. It doesn't matter to anyone but ourselves whether we are cisgender (a person who identifies with the sex we were biologically assigned), transgender (who identifies with a different gender than the one we were born with) or non-binary (someone who doesn't identify with the "birth gender" or with any other). Nor if, when it comes to sexual orientation, we feel attracted to people of the opposite sex (heterosexuals), to the same sex (homosexuals), to people, period (pansexuals), or to no one (asexuals). Only in this way, without social judgment - and with sex being one of its main components - can our lives run smoothly, without frustration and, ultimately, revolt. And if this is so, why should a fetish be looked at with suspicion? Why should a podolophist like me, who feels sexually aroused by beautiful, long-toed, vein-free feet with smooth soles be considered different from a woman who gets turned on by rippling abs, bulging biceps and broad shoulders, or a man who goes wild with huge breasts and wobbly buttocks under revealing leggins? Because society still has a long way to go and learn.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a fascinating man. So fascinating that he inspired a series that, at the time of this writing, is Netflix's big hit. At only 18 years of age, he claimed his first fatality - out of a total of 17 men and teenagers he would murder by 1991. Described by his schoolmates as "bizarre" from his tender age of ten, when he began his hobby of picking up dead animals from the road to dissect them, he became an alcoholic at 15 because he drank to "forget the macabre thoughts," he confessed. And he confessed much more. His crimes were perpetrated to satisfy his desires for rape, necrophilia, and cannibalism that he fantasized about from an early age. He would lure his partners into saunas and gay bars, take them to a more secluded place, drug them, and murder them. Only then would he rape them. Then he would dismember the bodies, strip the flesh from the bones, and crush the bones into small pieces, which he would scatter around the garden of his house. But he kept the heads, through refined dissection processes, and for long periods of time, which he used to masturbate. Examined by various specialists, Dahmer was diagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, and Psychotic Disorder. It is unclear how they came to such a surprising conclusion. More importantly, it was discovered that Jeff (as he was known to all) was sexually aroused by handling the viscera of his victims. Fascinating, isn't it? I chose this nonsense of an example to draw some differences in concepts. Which are not only necessary but, by now, urgent. Sexual fantasies are one thing: submission, its inverse (domination), group sex, threesomes, exhibitionism, or sex with strangers. Only by experimenting will you find out if they are not just fantasies after all, but true fetishes (in the overwhelming majority of cases, you will find out that after all, and even though you fantasize about the situation, the pleasure you derive from it is none). If pleasure is obtained and the orgasm comes in a more intense way, then yes, we are facing a fetish: voyeurism, latex and other types of fabric, cross-dressing with clothes of the opposite sex, sex in public places, the classic sex tape, types of lingerie, types of shoes (high heels are the most common) and, of course, uniforms of certain professions. Deriving from the French word that literally means "spell", it was the Portuguese, these naughty boys, who started using the foreign term to define an object that is worshipped, by attributing it magical powers, in the religious celebrations they observed in the African colonies. This is still the dictionary definition today. However, the term gained so much notoriety that, being "discovered" by Charles de Brosses in 1757, it has since been debated in Anthropology, Psychology, Psychopathology and, above all, in Freud's Psychoanalysis, thus proving that this is a serious subject that should not be minimized with recourse to amusing jokes.

Finally, we have paraphilia. And here, my friends, it is not only the pig that is twisting its tail. The whole of human civilization writhes when all its canons are shaken. Let's face it, it's not easy to arm ourselves with all our free spirit and not make value judgments when we know that there are people who have a "nose for noses." And, unlike those who like feet, who feel sexual attraction just by looking at them, a nasophile is one who derives sexual pleasure from touching, licking, or sucking a nose, even fantasizing about penetrating it or, finally, ingesting its secretions. Paraphilia (from the Greek para meaning "out of" and philia "love"), is a sexual behavior that does not seek copulation as a maximum source of pleasure and which is commonly called a perversion. In psychology, they are considered harmless, except when they are aimed at a potentially dangerous object, when the pursuit of the satisfaction of desire may be harmful (to oneself or to others), or even when it impedes normal sexual functioning. In this case, the paraphilia is considered a distortion and is listed in the ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Problems). It is important to mention that homosexuality, oral sex and anal sex have already been considered paraphilias, since they almost always go against the social conventions in force at a certain time and/or society... In Japan, for example, where even the sexual practices (or lack of them, which is also very common) are exotic, the omorashi has more and more "patients"... Getting sexual pleasure from watching someone who desperately needs to urinate and ends up doing it in their pants. More global is dendrophilia, the sexual desire for trees, plants, fruits or vegetables. This paraphilia causes one to be so attracted to a tree that one goes so far as to rub against it or masturbate "at the sight of it" or, of course, insert fruits or vegetables into the anus or vagina.

Agalmatophilia is ancient. The first record is that of a German psychiatrist who studied the case of a gardener who attempted coitus with a reproduction of the Venus de Milo, in 1877. "I cannot resist the urge," he said, as do all other agalmatophiles, who are attracted to statues or dolls, but only on condition that they are naked. Strange? Yes. But at least it is harmless. Like actirasty, which is the attraction to and obtaining of pleasure from the rays of the sun, with the potential to climax just by looking at them, which is difficult, and, let's face it, reaching orgasm with sunglasses on is not for everyone. Hybristophilia, on the other hand, is a little more risky... Having sexual pleasure with someone just because that someone has been accused of violent crimes, such as burglars, rapists and even murderers. The overwhelming majority of people who suffer from this paraphilia are female, and the phenomenon has grown exponentially in American prisons, where more and more inmates receive letters from "fans" who wish to "visit" them in prison in order to satisfy their desire. There are studies done by US universities that attest that this phenomenon is changing the social fabric of the prison community. And it is also there, in a country where there is no National Health Service, where health insurance is very expensive and where a stomatology consultation can cost thousands of dollars, that some feel at home. For them, the absence of teeth is the biggest turn-on. And yes, the epitome of pleasure is when you receive oral sex from your toothless partner. Does this sound like a joke? Yes. As it would seem to relate this paraphilia to gerontophilia, or sexual attraction to older people, which is related to a mental disorder that occurred during childhood and usually accompanies it with masochistic tendencies, a desire to be humiliated, and a need for subordination to a will other than one's own. Besides climacophilia, which is the sexual excitement obtained by watching someone falling down the stairs (curiously, or not, it has nothing to do with the pleasure felt by falling down the stairs), one could not fail to mention claustrophilia, which is the sexual attraction to tight places (yes, the joke was obvious and that's why you didn't write "closed places"), misophilia which is the sexual attraction to putrefying flesh (people who love zombie movies), psellismophilia which consists of the sexual attraction to the stutterer himself rather than the stutterer, or macrophilia which is the sexual attraction to giant "things" (namely ocean liners, obelisks such as the Washington or Giza Pyramids, and even the Sphinx, if one thinks it "fits"). Spectrophiles want very much (very much) to have sex with ghosts, abasiophiles are sexually attracted to people who have prostheses to complement amputated limbs, and the classic coprophilia is the attraction to a person's feces (and not to the person who defecated), while chelonaphilia is the sexual attraction to turtles, not necessarily those of the Galapagos, so that an erotic novel entitled I'll Love a Turtle is expected at any moment. That said, the point is not that we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that we are sexually healthy people, including the guys who only know the missionary position. It's how difficult it is, after all this information, to go to a music festival without thinking that there, in the middle of all those people, there will surely be someone suffering from formicophilia, that specific zoophilia.

Translated from the original on The Butterfly Effect issue from Vogue Portugal, published October 2022.Full story and credits on the print issue.