You talk about fetishes a lot and about feeling shame. Is there any fetish that is just too shameful, that I should be trying to get rid of rather than fantasize about? For example, if I were attracted to children, would it be wrong to fantasize about fictional children? Assume no real children are involved; that's obviously a step too far.
Howdy,
You can do anything in your mind—that’s free territory. You just have to keep your fantasy out of the real world. Some thoughts must stay thoughts.
Some fetishes can't be indulged without breaking the law, harming yourself or others, or being a bad person. These fetishes don’t pass the “safe, sane, and consensual” or “risk-aware and consensual” requirements that distinguish permissible kinks and fetishes (the ones welcomed in the kink community) from real harm and abuse.
That said, I don’t know if it’s possible for a person to just “get rid” of a fetish. Ask anyone who has ever tried to simply “get rid” of anxiety: it is impossible to banish a thought, and I think that the greater effort one applies, the harder one fights an idea, the stronger it becomes and the more it lingers.
Your mind is yours. In your head—and only in your head—you can have any thoughts you like, so long as you control your actions and impulses in response to them. Most people can do that, but some people struggle, and those people need a therapist.
A fetish can be seen as a thought, or a fantasy. No one chooses their thoughts, but with training, we can learn to live with them in healthier ways. This is true of all intrusive and difficult thoughts. People with depression and anxiety have the same struggle: they have difficult thoughts or patterns of thinking and must learn to live with them. Attempting to push thoughts away often has the opposite effect.
Let's talk more about fetishes. No one chooses to have a fetish. No one chooses the things that turn them on. We are slaves to our genes, childhood experiences, traumas, and turn-ons, and a fetish is probably the result of all these. I cannot say for sure if I think people are born kinky or if kinks and fetishes emerge later in life, in response to childhood stimuli. Either way, as adults, we have little control over them. Some people get lucky and have fetishes for things that are socially acceptable, like anonymous sex with strangers or getting tied up. Others are less lucky: they have fetishes for things that, if done, would harm them and others.
If you have one of these fetishes, you have done nothing wrong. Your fetish, being a natural thing you did not create, cannot on its own be “right” or “wrong”. Your actions, on the other hand, can be right or wrong. A thought or fantasy is not an action—it's a thought. We do not police thought—at least, not yet—but we do police internet activity, porn viewership, porn possession (for certain types of porn), and virtually all other actions that can be taken in response to thoughts. Living with an unlivable fetish requires self-control, and usually a good therapist.
Some people have fetishes for corpses, animals, and kids, and these fetishes, though natural, cannot be acted on without being a bad person. I pity people with fetishes for things like being eaten alive or killed because, for them, their fetish is literally unable to be experienced—you can't enjoy a fetish if you’re dead. Some fetishes must remain in fantasy land, and that's doable; thousands of people do it every day.
Fisting—my favorite fetish—was, for years, something I was happy to keep in fantasy land, and my life would be no worse now if I had. One day, I accidentally found a fisting video (which is legal in the U.S. but not England) online. The memory of it stayed seared in my mind as a quiet, secret idea—a passing thought that I would occasionally masturbate to—for years, and in those years, I did not do anything more with the idea. I didn't let it become a part of my life. Until one day, I did. Lucky for me, fisting was legal, ethical, consensual, and (for the most part) socially acceptable.
Other fetishes are not legal, not ethical, not consensual, and not socially acceptable. But the fact remains that I was able to keep fisting in the realm of fantasy for a long time and chose to pursue it in real life (to watch porn and, later, to try it). Our choices define us, not our thoughts. Many kinky people have a range of kinks, some they talk about and some they don't, some they do in real life and some they don't. Our actions, the things we do, determine whether we are good or bad people.
Bringing specific fantasies to life would force many people to break the law and abandon their ethics, so folks with these fetishes must either a) make peace with not doing them or b) try role-play. Role-play is a pretend game, an activity in which one or more consenting adults mutually agree to act like something or someone they’re not to facilitate an erotic experience. Adult babies are not real babies, and human pups are not canines—they are adults engaging in consensual role-play. You can push the limit of role-play pretty far, as do people into rape fantasy and simulated rape. As long as it’s consensual and agreed upon between two adults aware of the risks, it’s fine.
There are so many things you can do—such a wild sex life you can have—without committing any ethical or legal crime that there’s no reason to act on a fetish that would destroy your life. My life is fine without going there. I have enough fun.
In meditation—something you and everyone reading this should try—one learns that the mind likes to think. That's just what it does. Thoughts and feelings are things that happen to us, and we don't have much control over them. I believe that extreme and taboo fantasies pass regularly through the minds of most people, and most people suppress them or try to push them away. Pushing away thoughts is hard and tends to be ineffective; a resisted thought often grows larger until we can no longer ignore it and must address it. Meditation helps us react to thoughts more gently. Remember: a thought is just a thought. It says nothing about you, nothing about your values or beliefs. Thoughts come and go. We can experience them without judging them.
Those who have ample experience in meditation will tell you that while we cannot control thoughts, we can work on how we relate to them. With practice, we can learn to simply let them be. Not every thought is valuable. Some are dumb and weird and don't require any involvement. We can give them space to bounce around until our attention moves on to the next thing. Thoughts are visitors—they leave eventually.
I've done what I do for a long time. I have talked to many people about their fetishes, and I know a small number of lovely humans who have occasional, passing fantasies about underage folks. I do not believe any of these people will ever act on their fantasies because they can control their behavior. Controlling one's behavior—from table manners to spending habits—is just part of being a healthy adult.
Think, for a moment, about how our culture glorifies images of beautiful dead women. Look at all the gothic romance and vampire content in the world. Look at popular horror films and thrillers: lots of dead, beautiful women.
This makes me think that many people fantasize about sex with a dead, beautiful woman. But necrophilia is taboo and illegal in most countries and will land anyone caught doing it in prison, and statistically, only a small percentage of people become killers. So there must be a great chasm, a gulf, between thought and action, and that chasm is what separates healthy humans from the few among us who, for various reasons, cross that gulf and turn a passing thought into a horrible action. There are many mental steps one must take between thinking something and doing it, especially when that thing is violent, forbidden, illegal, and cruel.
I think asking for help is a wise decision. It means you are trying to do the right thing, which to me is the purest definition of being a good person. Find a therapist.
Love, Beastly