A group of us were sitting in Dewick one day at lunch, and we started talking about sex (as usual). And as more often than I'd like to admit, we ventured onto the topic of fetishes ...
The first of which was, inevitably, anal sex.
I feel like what was once considered taboo and hushed has now become only slightly novel and a lot more "kinky." The Bible condemns sodomy, which usually simply refers to anal sex. My religion teacher gave me the impression that sodomy was a one-way ticket straight to hell. But at the age of 12, I thought that sodomy meant sex between two people of the same gender. Needless to say, Catholic school gave me a skewed view of sexuality.
Should one have anal sex? Should one allow anything to enter through what was designed only to let out? If there's a crowd of people out there that is vehement about supporting anal sex, then they must be onto something, right?
I asked around my experienced friends for what they thought. One of my gay male friends told me that it's a fine line between pain and pleasure. He warned me that the act itself may not be exactly "pleasurable ... it's an acquired taste."
A female friend of mine told me of her one and only experience with anal. She had tried it with her boyfriend one drunken night. Let's just say she's never done it again since.
That's because there are definite guidelines. Anal isn't like regular sex. Quickies aren't going to work through the back door. You need lube, time and more lube. Just hoping and trying to stick something as large as penis in your butt isn't going to be fun. But it comes down to preference. Some people swear by it, but some people would rather get surgery then have to have anal sex.
I did some research on fetishes, and after what I read, I decided that anal sex is far, far from being a fetish.
Anal sex may be a fetish or just a preference, but there are plenty of kinky activities that definitely fall under the category of fetish. Did you know that there's an underground magazine (it's not in the United States) for sex in raingear ... with monkeys?
Another big fetish is choking. This sounds creepy and slightly resembles rape. I'm not talking about S&M. But I've heard a lot from men and women that the idea of pain or being choked during sex turns them on, as long as it's "hurting" and not for real. As I said in an earlier article, testosterone is the main hormone for sex drive in men, which is also the hormone for anger. So put the two together and you've got a choking fetish. Okay, maybe it's not that simple.
One fetish I recently stumbled upon is adult babies, otherwise known as "abies." These are grown adults who enjoy reverting back to infancy. They may dress up as babies, wear diapers, play childish games or whatever else a baby might do. This is nothing close to pedophilia; "abies" don't want to have sex with children. They get erotic pleasure from acting like children. Apparently, they feel safe reverting back to a state where things aren't complicated by the adult world and emotions are pure.
Another largely popular fetish that has been around for a while is latex masks. It's an almost all-male fetish where they dress up in feminized latex masks. This is also popular in Japan, where people indulge anime fetishes by dressing up in full-body costumes of their favorite cartoon characters.
It's like a form of escapism: Acting as a baby allows some people to feel their senses as infants who are exempt from the rules and structures of adulthood. Dressing up in latex masks as women is thrilling for some men, even if they don't want to become women; maskers aren't all looking to have sex-changes. They like the feel of the latex; it's like putting on a show, and it's the thrill of the performance that they seek.
We might not want to have anal sex, and most of us probably can't relate to wanting to wear diapers, but we all have preferences. Some are more intense and unconventional than others. Unless we have that fetish, it's hard for most people to understand, because we don't understand where the need comes from.
Fetishes fall all over the kinky scale, all the way from fur and heels to necrophilia and amputee devotees. The list of fetishes goes on and on, and we can never be sure how someone becomes a fetishist.
But one common thread of many fetishes, like "abies" and latex masks, is the idea of escaping the restrictions of society.