Fetishes: OK/No?

[scuttles]

I am a 14 year old boy, and I find myself attracted to amputees. I masturbate to images/videos of them, and most sexual fantasies I have involve amputees. I wonder: is it okay to indulge this fetish, or should I try to ignore it? What would be the repercussions of not doing so? Or is it normal to have kinks and fetishes?

[Sam W]

Hi scuttles,

In terms of fantasy and masturbation, there's not really any harm in having certain quirks or kinks, and most people have them (kink is, in fact, a tricky thing to define, because then you've got to figure out what "normal" desire even looks like). The things to watch for with fantasies is to make sure they don't spill into your actual actions (so, you start objectifying amputees who you meet or know, rather than seeing them as full people, or assuming that all amputees behave a certain way). If you want, you can experiment with and explore fantasies that don't have that component and see what happens.

Too, it's good to examine where a desire is coming from when it involves members of a certain category (like amputees, or people of a certain race). Because sometimes those desires are being driven by stereotypes about how a given group is.

[Redskies]

Hey there, scuttles. I'm really glad you asked about this, and I'd like to expand some on what Sam said above.

I think perspectives are important here, so I'll say at the front - I'm disabled, but not am amputee and often not read as disabled; and I've loved, been friends with or partnered with multiple variedly disabled people. Do you have any people in your life who you know are disabled?

There's really an infinite variety of sexual desires, and just like Sam said, it's all good (so long as any partnered activity is consensual, and everyone is safe and healthy).

The word is often used casually a lot more broadly, but from a sexology perspective, a fetish is sexual arousal that's about an object, not a person; or, about objectifying a part of a person's body. So, being sexually aroused by part of someone's body, as part of an attraction or desire for their whole self, or them as a person, doesn't really qualify as a fetish. On the other hand, only being interested in that one thing, and having it not matter much which person the body part is attached to (or, not attached to), would be a fetish. Those two situations tend to play out very differently for both the person having the feelings and the people they're about. Do you have a sense of which situation matches more what you're experiencing?

Taking a common - although somewhat unhelpful, because who are "some people", and why does their opinion mean anything - usage of the word "fetish" for a moment: it's often used to describe a sexual desire that some people consider "weird" or "wrong" or "perverse". So, directly: there's nothing weird or wrong or peverse about feeling attracted to a disabled person, or feeling sexual desire or arousal for a person with a disability. Although often the mainstream signals clearly that being attracted to a disabled person is weird or impossible, it's really very ordinary. A disabled person is simply a person, and it's no more or less peculiar than being attracted to any other human being. There's a huge pile of common belief that disabled people aren't attractive, or that any combination of disabled person and sex is perverse or icky; boy do especially visibly disabled people know about that, and disabled people often have to work very hard to know in their own selves that they are attractive and can be sexual. So, it wouldn't be at all surprising, or anything to feel bad about, if you'd picked up some of those beliefs, under the surface; we all tend to pick up some of the beliefs around us, even when we try not to.

If you're feeling like what you're specifically attracted to is the amputation or the fact that they're an amputee rather than the person who is an amputee, there's a little different conversation to be had around that. Disabled people are often badly objectified by our society simply in everyday life, and when there's a strong dynamic like that already in play where someone has a fetish (in the sexology sense of the word), it's important to be extra-careful about how one behaves with the fetish: it would be so easy to do real harm without anyone even meaning to. Disability-fetishists who do Not behave responsibly are nearly universally very unpopular with disability communities, and for good reason!

Where would you like to take the discussion from here?