Recriminating fetishes is moralism, says Christian Dunker – 07/10/2023 – Equilíbrio

Actor Fernando Mais saw his name rise in the trending topics on Twitter last weekend, not because of any of the productions he worked on, but because users discovered that he was the author of a famous profile dedicated to eschatology.

Gustavo Scat, his pseudonym, got excited in contact with feces and other waste. He wrote a book on the subject and reported his fetish experiences. On Saturday (8), he was exposed and judged by the social media court.

The origin of the word fetish refers to the idea of ​​a spell – hence the kind of magical belief that is given to the power of objects in sexual practice.

Christian Dunker, psychoanalyst and professor of psychoanalysis and psychopathology at the Institute of Psychology at USP (University of São Paulo), helps to understand the theme and talks about the idea that one fetish can be better or worse than the other.

What is it fetish?
For psychoanalysis, the fetish is an object that ends up attracting both the objective and the person’s sexual satisfaction. A fetishist once defined the fetish as follows: “I am so in love with boots that, unfortunately, to get them, I sometimes have to get a woman along.”

Fetish is when what could be seductive and attractive is a means for eroticism, it is a condition for eroticism to work. The object, in the case of the fetish, becomes an end in itself, it becomes autonomous.

Does everyone have one or more fetishes?
These original theorists of fetishism divided fetishists into big fetishists and little fetishists. Think of the Brazilian film “O Cheiro do Ralo” (2007): there we can see the fetish for butts. The character gradually discovers this fetish based on smell and dirt, and at a certain point this starts to really disturb his relationships with women, because he seems more interested in the asses than in the women themselves. That would be an example of a great fetishist.

The little fetishist is the one who establishes certain conditions for his eroticism to work in relation to the other. [Sigmund] Freud, by the way, says that all of us, to some extent, are little fetishists, that we have our fetishes.

And many times people don’t even realize it, and say that such a relationship “gave chemistry”, “made the match”. Some are aware of what it is, be it the shape of the fingers, the way the hand is held, the type of hair, whether it is blond or dark, etc. It’s a trait of the other that assumes a function of condition, that is, without it it won’t happen, without it there’s no chemistry.

An actor was exposed this weekend on social media because his fetish in scatology was made public. Do you have fetishes that are worse than others?
This recrimination of ours with certain sexual modalities or preferences is an outdated moralism. What psychoanalysis says is that all of us, to some extent, will have perverse traits, even in our fantasies. So, when we see an actor, a famous person, who cultivates a sexual practice that is not ours, this should generate respect or indifference, because everyone has their own, everyone has their own “shame”, let’s call it that .

But we love to criticize other people’s shame, or other people’s fetishes for that matter, the better to suppress ourselves. Deep down, attacks on a modality like any other to find satisfaction have this function, of self-restraint.

Why are some people ashamed of their fetish?
Because deep down it reveals something about us, which commands us, which dominates us, which is a kind of rule that we are obliged to follow. And it is something that, deep down, dehumanizes the other. It is a trait that we perceive and for which we blame ourselves because we think that sexuality should converge with love, with affections, with feelings, and not be linked to the collection of objects in relation to which we have a passion. ownership relationship.

The fetish is very interesting because it invites the fetishist to possess that object, but in fact what we see is that it is the fetish that possesses the fetishist, and not the other way around.

When does the fetish become dangerous?
When he passes over the will, the assent, the actual relationship with the other. It’s possible that the Jack Stripador was a fetishist, for example. There are famous criminals who murder their victims to find what’s inside them, in a fetish with their internal organs.

In the movie “Perfume – The Story of a Killer” (2006), inspired by a real case, we have a great example of a fetish linked to a trace of odor. The person begins to steal the scent of others and for that he imposes cruelty, manipulation, a perverse relationship with the other.

Erotic toys and sex shop fantasies are fetishes?
Sometimes this is indeed a fetish construct. We notice this by its monotony, because every time it has to be the same, the person does not change, does not explore. The fetish has such a fixed trait that it is not nice when the other is not on the same page, is not in the same fetishistic mood. But erotic toys, in general, are characterized by variability, you exchange, change, all without much damage.

The fetish, in turn, has this idea that it is an enchanted object, it is an object that has a life of its own, it is an object that has properties that command the subject.

There are fetishes that are more common?
In the sense of the big fetish and the small fetish there are some that, yes, are more common. Underwear, socks, shoes, boots, tones of voice, leather, certain accessories that pierce, piercings, tattoos, it is very common for all of this to generate an effect of fixation of erotic interest.

There are also fetishes for body shapes, when a person has to be fat or thin, very small or very large, with dwarfs, with animals, this is very common too. Fruit fetish is one of the most common paraphilias in our country.

A rare fetish was that of a person who, in order to have sex, needed to have the other in a cast. It went back to the moment when he had his first sexual encounters and was bedridden because he had broken his foot. This shows how the fetish is a type of libido fixation.

But anything and any object can be a fetish.

Does the fetish have to be treated?
I think the fetish doesn’t need to be treated unless it brings some inconvenience, some suffering to the person himself or to those who are adjacent to that person. I wouldn’t say it’s something to be corrected, also because clinically the big fetishists are seen as intractable.