How do sexual kinks/fetishes develop?
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Personally I nearly drowned when I was a child & I found out I really liked water right then & there. Something else happened at around 17-18 that involved water that would usually be game over for most people, it just turned me on. I can’t explain it any better than I hit euphoria being that close to death and enjoyed it
The most popular explanation is through conditioning.
Think Pavlov’s dog with the bell, but with humans and sexual stimuli instead.
In simpler terms: random other things get mixed up with sexual activity, and this can lead to that other thing becoming linked to the sexual feelings.
Say someone is wearing red shoes while you had sex, those red shoes might become associated with the act of having sex, and this can lead to the red shoes becoming sexually stimulating.
Anyone who is answering with any kind of actual “answer” is wrong.
The truth is, many things about how people work are hard to study and hard to have scientific answers for. We still don’t fully understand how the brain works, and are still working on DNA (genetics). Scientists are still trying to figure out how to study “nature” vs “nurture” but it isn’t a “versus” it’s actually both interacting in complicated ways.
Kinks and fetishes are hard to study because they develop in different people in different ways. It’s not possible to do a controlled study where we raise children in very very specific ways for science, so we can do surveys where we ask people to look back and guess, and then we try and track patterns.
This has been done, but not clear answers are out there. For every person that says “this specific event happened to me as a child and now I have this related kink” (such as some of the comments here), there are many other people that had *that exact same experience* and either never developed the kink, or developed a totally different or opposite fetish. Similarly, “conditioning” is not a valid explanation because some people had an interest in something long before they had any exposure to it in any form. It’s probably one of multiple ways a fetish can develop, but no one way is the only way it happens.
For adults, a fantastic book on the subject is Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us by Jesse Bering. This book relies on lots of science and good research, but still does not have a clear answer on this.
There are a number of disparate views on this, as evident in the comments already.
I think Freud’s take on it was in regards to *pleasure* and *symbolism.* Wherein any pleasure we recieve, be it comfort, familial, from children, from flavours, smells etc… is inherently linked with any sexual pleasure (an evolution of basic pleasure in general as we mature), and as such the overlap in the mind creates intense symbology.
I would take it a step further based on modern neuroscience. While philosophically many have argued that everything is defined by its opposite. I would also go as far to say that is true in our brains. Love and hate. Pain and pleasure. Hard and soft. Hot and cold. I postulate that each of these singular concepts are a single ‘pattern’ in the brain, and the opposite is literally the the exact same pattern, but activated differently. Imagine the love/hate circuit. A number of neurons and synapses connected in a very specific way. Well perhaps we experience love when it gets a ‘positive’ signal and hate when it gets a ‘negative’ signal. This explains so much peculiar human phenomenon imo. How we can hurt those we love the most, and find comfort in the least universally comforting things. Because all it takes is a little bit of ‘noise’ in the circuit to turn it into its opposite for all intents and purposes.
Thus, they develop in the same way that anything develops, natural selection, competition, fitness etc.
Even if they are quirks of random noise, apparently there isnt a strong ‘fitness’ failure that comes with it. It could even be that the ability to fetishise something otherwise dangerous/damaging is considerably more ‘fit’ in terms of survival than otherwise. As such fetishisation could be on the rise not just because of its social stigma changing, but because it’s a skillset that makes us even *more* adapatable and able to cope with modern challenges.
I read an account from a guy who got off on having bugs crawling on him. He said that he remembered the first time it happened, he had a pet ant colony and some of them were out of the habitat and crawling on his legs when he popped his first ever boner. He’s had a thing for bugs ever since.
It can also be habituation. There have been studies of men being treated for porn use disorder. Young men whose first experience of intensely sexual imagery came in early adolescence (11-12 yrs), can only achieve gratification by watching extreme porn videos, and are only attracted to women dressed and made up in stereotypical porn styles, big hair, big chest, caked on makeup, thigh boots etc.
The rise of internet porn in the past twenty some years has produced an uptick in men seeking treatment because their fetish has torpedoed what few real relationships they’ve attempted. They literally can’t get it up without their habitual mode of stimulation.
This is the definition of a fetish.
We don’t ‘know’ exactly. There are theories, but none that we can prove, because forcing kinks onto developing children is probably against some human rights.
One that seems to make sense to me is the idea that they develop in childhood due to mixed signals. The brain is a very malleable thing when young, and especially during puberty, it’s trying to understand this whole “sex” thing.
Let’s say you’re a young growing boy, maybe your parents neglected to give you the talk. You have an older sister who is fairly messy; clothing is everywhere as you’re playing with legos
Let’s say she took a shower, passes by, almost loses her towel. You feel funny, and you don’t know why. You see your sister all the time so it couldn’t be that… Maybe it’s the bra on the floor then?
It’s obviously not gonna happen with one instance, but as the theory goes, through repeated exposure, that kid may develop a lingerie fetish.
This theory also helps to explain why cartoon characters and other childhood things are common sources for kinks. In theory, it also explains why rates of incest can be more common in conservative areas; if all little Timmy has as a sexual reference point is cousin Louise, well, that’s the reference point he has.
We have some theories, but they aren’t particularly well established.
Things like obvious sexual characteristics and feet have potential physiological basis. There’s some ideas about supernormal stimulus and conditioning for these and more esoteric ideas. There’s an obvious pitch that we’re pre-wired for sexual selection, giving us a natural set of fetishes, but it’s remarkably inconsistent and random for having an alleged genetic component.
The ELI5 answer is “we have no concrete answer, but a lot of theories.”
In this order: Exposure, curiosity, interest, kink, hobby, fetish, lifestyle, addiction.
You don’t have to move forward, but you can’t move backwards.
Isn’t that pretty similar to asking how new hobbies develop?
Somebody told me your first sexual experience has a lot to do with it. So if your first sexual experience is with a curvy blonde, you might develop a thing for curvy blondes later on. If you had a traumatic childhood, you might seek out experiences that remind you of that. From a psychological standpoint, it does seem to make sense. Your first experience makes a lasting impression on your psyche
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