How Sexual Desire Works- The Enigmatic Urge

by Frederick Toates

  Male displays designed to arouse female desire are much less evident. If we could explain this, we might understand why fetishes are overwhelmingly a male phenomenon (Kinsey et al., 1953). In giving lectures on this topic, I sometimes ask the students to imagine a female who steals male shoes or underwear to form a collection. This invariably triggers giggles, particularly from women, suggesting its implausibility.

  Women do sometimes form associations with inanimate objects. It was reported that they would kiss the paper on which the eighteenth-century writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (more on him in a moment!) had placed his name and offer a high price for a glass from which he had drunk (C. Wilson, 1988). One might suspect that over the centuries, such stories have been embellished but I witnessed something similar. At a concert in Cambridge by the 1960s pop group The Walker Brothers, I observed girls to tear the sleeve off a member of the group and then shred it, the spoils being shared out (university academics rarely have such an effect on their audience). The important point is that the objects collected by such females owe their strength not to an association simply with a male or even with a strikingly attractive male but with a particular famous male, who shows some exceptional behaviour or ability. Again this demonstrates the female attribution of meaning and personal individualistic association to their emotions.

  There are several variations of fetish. The expression ‘partialism’ refers to a type in which a particular part of the body forms an attraction somewhat in isolation from the rest of the body. The transvestite, sometimes termed transvestophile (Money, 1986), derives sexual excitement from dressing in women’s clothes. Transvestism might be an extension of fetishism, that is a fetishist attraction to clothes as worn by a woman (Kinsey et al., 1953).

  Using ‘fetish’ in the psychiatric sense, Krafft-Ebing (1978) claimed (p. 35):

  As a rule, when the individual fetish is absent coitus becomes impossible or can only be managed under the influence of the respective imaginary presentation, and even then grants no gratification. Its pathological condition is strongly accentuated by the circumstance that the fetichist does not find gratification in coitus itself, but rather in the manipulation of that portion of the body or that object which forms the interesting and effective fetish.

  We should not view fetishes in an entirely negative light. As one man observed (Gosselin and Wilson, 1980, p. 118):

  People should envy us rather than back off from us: we’ve got a stone cold, guaranteed aphrodisiac that can turn us on at any time, however old we are.

  How might fetishes arise?

  It is commonly assumed that fetishes acquire their power from association formation (Binet, 1887). What seems to occur is the pairing, even once, of a human-related object or human feature with a powerful emotion, whether positive or negative, such that the object/feature acquires a strong sexual value. In some cases, the initial emotion is one specifically of sexual arousal, whereas in other cases the emotion seems not to be initially sexual but comes to acquire this label. Fetishes appear not to arise from conditioning to any object that happens to be around at the time of arousal. As Leitenberg and Henning (1995, p. 485) note: ‘Few people are turned on by doorknobs, bedroom dressers, or bathroom fixtures, even though these cues are in the environment when sexual arousal and orgasm take place.’ This points to the brain’s preparedness to link with particular classes of stimuli.

  As the pioneer of sex research, Krafft-Ebing (1978) wrote (p. 145):

  in the life of every fetichist there may be assumed to have been some event which determined the association of lustful feeling with the single impression. This event must be sought for in the time of early youth, and, as a rule, occurs in connection with the first awakening of the sexual life.

  In some cases, the person can identify what he believes to be the incident that formed the association and set the whole thing going, whereas in other cases this information has been lost in the mists of time (Binet, 1887). Abel et al. (2008) describe the case of a boy who, at age 6, attended a church party where there were balloons. Some of these popped loudly, which terrified the boy and he ran from the church. Subsequently, he avoided balloons and loud noises. However, when a young teenager, he acquired the habit of masturbating while blowing up balloons. At age 18, he was arrested in a store after a repeated history of asking sales assistants to blow up balloons. He would retreat a distance and masturbate to the sight of the balloon. Abel et al., argue, doubtless correctly, that the arousal triggered initially by fear became labelled sexual with the emergence of sexual maturity. Note that the cue here is a dynamic one: the change in shape of the balloon. Stimuli with a defined onset and offset are probably particularly likely to form associations, as opposed to door handles or wardrobes.

  In one study in England, people with rubber fetishes gave ages between 4 and 10 years as the most likely for when the attraction first appeared (Gosselin and Wilson, 1980). The authors extrapolated that this would have been at around the start of the Second World War, when anxiety and hence arousal were triggered to a large degree. It was when gas-masks, with their associated rubber, were much in evidence.

  Another possible angle on understanding fetishes is to consider the relative value of the object and the person. Could it be that in the life of the fetishist, something has happened to form an aversive association with real people but has left something about them, such as their clothing, unaffected? An experiment suggests this possibility (LaTorre, 1980). Men were duped into believing that women had rejected them and consequently women were devalued. However, their underwear, feet and legs were not devalued. It appears that at times of prominence of sexually transmitted diseases, foot fetishes assume a greater frequency (Lowenstein, 2002). This suggests a fear of the whole person.

  Concerning ‘fetish’ in the mild sense of the word, the ubiquitous use of stockings and suspenders in pornography calls for an explanation. I can only suggest that it arises from a combination of factors based upon conditioning in the following way. These items are tagged with desire potential (‘incentive salience’) because of their proximity to the female genitals and their exposure during undressing. In pornography, their appearance has a certain dynamic in terms of erotic progression. In addition, the culture means that they acquire a connotation of the forbidden.

  Transvestism

  Transvestism (‘fetishistic cross-dressing’) describes the phenomenon where a male is sexually excited by wearing an item of women’s clothes, often leading to masturbation (Stoller, 1971). Sometimes the single item remains constant for life. In other cases, this behaviour starts with wearing a single item of women’s clothing and then broadens to include additional items, sometimes culminating in full dressing as a woman. The man normally retains a heterosexual identity and is attracted to women, thereby the phenomenon needs to be distinguished from transsexualism. In the latter case, the male is not happy being a man and is not sexually excited by clothes. Of course, women commonly wear clothing more typically male but they are not sexually excited by doing so.

  For transvestophiles, Money (1986, p. 38) observes how a negative emotion can get transformed into a positive one:

  The tranvestophile’s tragedy, in some cases on record in his early history, was his mortification at having been paraded in public in girl’s clothes, in many instances as a punishment. The triumph is that the mortification is transposed into erotic and genital arousal.

  Early dressing in girl’s clothes is evident very commonly, if not invariably, in the developmental history of boys who go on to become transvestophiles (Stoller, 1971).

  Stoller (1971) describes one of his transvestophile clients in Los Angeles. The man, a machinist in his thirties was married and had three children. He was first cross-dressed at age 4 by an aunt. At age 7, forced cross-dressing as a punishment by another aunt triggered strong sexual arousal. From the time of puberty, sexual excitement required wearing women’s shoes, which escalated to full dressing in women’s clothes. He had no interest in male bo
dies. When being with a woman, to attain arousal required either wearing items of women’s clothing or having fantasies that he was doing so.

  Bodily features and actions as fetishes

  Particular human features can acquire fetishist properties. This was articulated almost one thousand years ago by the Islamic scholar Ibn Hazm, in describing men for whom idiosyncratic qualities of their partners:

  had become an obsession with them, the sole object of their passion, and the very last word (as they thought) in elegance.

  He added that when the relationship triggering the fetishist element ended, nonetheless the fetishist taste continued:

  those men never lost their admiration for the curious qualities which provoked their approval of them, neither did they ever afterwards cease to prefer these above other attributes that are in reality superior to them.

  (Ibn Hazm, 1027/1953, p. 60)

  Ibn Hazm observed various fetishist elements essential for attraction based upon an initial encounter, including a particularly short neck, shortness of height and a wide mouth, or in his own case, blonde hair.

  Another example is the sixteenth- to seventeenth-century French philosopher, René Descartes, who had a particularly strong attraction to cross-eyed women, arising from a childhood crush on a cross-eyed girl (Binet, 1887; Shaffer, 2011). The nineteenth-century French psychologist Alfred Binet described a male patient M.R., who had a fetish about women’s hands. M.R. recalled that even prior to puberty he had a peculiar fascination with girls’ hands but this was not then sexual in character. Only later did hands assume a sexual quality. Sometimes hands would suddenly appear to M.R. in his fantasy while he was engaged with his work and he would need to try to drive them away in order for work not to be disrupted.

  Krafft-Ebing describes a 30-year-old male civil servant who had a particular sexual fixation (1978, p. 155):

  Since his seventh year he had for a playmate a lame girl of the same age…it lies beyond doubt that the first sexual emotions towards the other sex were coincident with the sight of the lame girl.

  For ever after only limping women excited him sexually.

  Some attractions to particular bodily features appear to be acquired by what is termed ‘one-shot conditioning’. In the following case, this occurs with an arousing and, one might assume, aversive event. Krafft-Ebing (p. 73) describes a 26-year-old man, who had shown no interest in women until a chance event:

  when one of his mother’s maids cut her hand severely on a pane of glass, which she had broken while washing windows. While helping to stop the bleeding he could not keep from sucking up the blood that flowed from the wound, and in this act he experienced extreme erotic excitement, with complete orgasm and ejaculation.

  He then sought out this trigger by requesting of girls that he be allowed to prick their finger and lick the blood.

  Some men feel a sexual desire to observe women urinating. This is documented in graphic detail in the autobiography of the Victorian writer ‘Walter’ (Walter, 1995). While still a boy and prior to sexual development, Walter felt intense fascination with female urination. This was later to translate into a sexual desire and voyeurism directed to witnessing this event, to which he devoted inordinate effort and ingenuity.

  The Victorian English sexologist Havelock Ellis also derived a particular sexual arousal from observing women while they urinated (Brome, 1979). This apparently derived from when he was a boy, with his mother walking in the gardens of London’s Regent’s Park and his mother was ‘taken short’, needing to go into the bushes. The mother later said ‘I did not mean you to see that’, which might well have triggered embarrassment in an impressionable young man. C. Wilson (1988, p. 181) reports: ‘What seems most extraordinary was not that Ellis persuaded so many respectable young ladies to urinate in front of him, but that he himself was convinced that this was an exquisite aesthetic experience.’ How could this attraction be explained? I suggest that it builds upon a childhood fascination with the mystery surrounding the genital region and from where urine comes. This has the character of the secret and forbidden, associated with arousal. The act of urination provides a signal and marker of the existence and exposed function of this part of the female anatomy.

  More recently one-shot conditioning was described by Gebhard et al. (1965, p. 489), concerning:

  an individual, now in his thirties, who, when nearing puberty, had not as yet recognized sexual arousal. He became involved in a childhood tussle with a girl somewhat larger and more powerful than he. While struggling and wriggling beneath her he experienced not only his first conscious sexual arousal but in a strong degree. This one experience has dominated his life ever since. He has always been attracted to large, muscular, dominant females; and in his heterosexual contacts he tries to arrange the same wrestling. He has, not surprisingly, developed some additional masochistic attributes.

  Gebhard describes another case telling a similar story (p. 489):

  that of a boy who was already in what one might call the flush of sexual excitability which accompanies puberty in most males. During some childhood game he fractured his arm and was taken to a neighbourhood physician. The physician’s attractive nurse felt very sorry for the boy. During the reduction of the fracture and for some time afterwards she held and caressed him with his head pressed against her breasts. The boy experienced a powerful and curious combination of pain and sexual arousal. Considerably later in life this man began to notice that he was unusually attracted to brunettes with a certain type of hair style – attracted to an extent meriting the label of fetish. Some sadomasochistic tendencies also existed. After much introspection the man recalled that the hairstyle which was his fetish was the style in which the nurse had worn her hair. This insight did not destroy the fetish.

  In this case, as with that described by Krafft-Ebing, a negative emotion seemed to trigger, merge with or become labelled as sexual arousal, a phenomenon that appears frequently in the study of sexual desire. The process of one-shot conditioning might describe the initial phase of exposure but then the person could revive memories of the experience and thereby strengthen its value as a sexual stimulus.

  In some cases, the animate stimulus is not human. Krafft-Ebing (p. 83) describes a 42-year-old man who in childhood:

  took particular pleasure in witnessing the slaughtering of domestic animals, especially swine. He thus experienced lustful pleasure and ejaculation. Later he visited slaughterhouses in order to delight in the sight of flowing blood and the death throes of the animals.

  Fetishes linked to inanimate objects

  Binet (1887) described a judge living in nineteenth-century Paris, who had a fetish about the clothes worn by Italian women. The sight of them in the street caused an immediate genital reaction. The man attributed his fetish to an incident when he was a boy of 16 and a group of three Italian women happened to stand near him in the street. He was ‘bowled over’1 by this sight and subsequently trembled at the thought of them such that he was moved to follow any such women he saw in the street. Unlike some other cases, the clothes needed to be actually on the woman to have the effect, those in a window on a mannequin failed to arouse him. One might find this a rather sad and frustrating tale, except that he reported to Binet that the excitement gave him great pleasure. Another Parisian studied by Binet would steal women’s handkerchiefs to smell their odours, forming a collection of 300.

  Binet suggested that certain inanimate sexual fetishes derive from association with particular body parts. He illustrated this with patient M.R., just described, who had a primary fetish about women’s hands but also a secondary fetish about jewellery worn on the hand.

  Krafft-Ebing observed the high frequency of foot and shoe fetishes, in some cases not associated with attraction to the whole woman. He reported that glove fetishism was relatively rare as compared to hand fetishism, whereas shoe fetishism is common relative to foot fetishism. He suggested that the reason is that the hand is normally naked whereas the foot is normally
covered by a shoe. Occasionally, a boot fetish appears to arise as one-off conditioning, since on an early sexual encounter the woman was wearing boots. Krafft-Ebing describes a man who was introduced to sex at the age of 14 years. Subsequently a woman dressed any way other than the woman of this first encounter failed to interest him sexually.

  Freud (1953) noted the high frequency of foot fetishes and suggested that the shoe is symbolic of the female genitalia. He clearly had a rich imagination and also suggested that fur fetishes are due to an association with pubic hair.

  A survey of Google fetish interest groups reported in 2007 found that feet and shoes are still the most popular incentives for fetishist attraction and behaviour (Scorolli et al., 2007).

  An apparently harmless case

  A 15-year-old boy in New Orleans had a shoe fetish, requesting access to the shoes of women in his neighbourhood (Epstein, 1975). He reported that he wished to wet the shoes so as to make them shiny, that shoes occupied his mind for much of the time and entered his dreams. He also derived pleasure from putting a wet shoe on his own foot. The boy reported that the fetish first became apparent after (p. 306): ‘being at a swimming pool and feeling he would like to pay one of the girls to step in the water with canvas shoes on.’ Presumably, the transition from dull to relatively shiny on getting the shoes wet formed part of the fetish.