Who ever wrote this needs to go to writing school, wirte in a fashion that dumb Americans can understand this is off the hook. Who knows maybe you were just excited about the articles contents, maybe not....

The author's conventional wisdom is that women have fewer "outlying sexualities". But I wonder if that's really true, or if it's just been hidden. There is an incredible variety of romance and erotica written by women for women, especially in the last few years when it's become more socially acceptable. (I was amazed to discover bookstores in the Bible Belt that wouldn't sell racy romance novels ten years ago and are now selling fairly hardcore erotica.)

I think this romantic erotica isn't noticed, because on one hand, romance isn't considered "feminist" and so it's not discussed by female critics, and on the other side, it's not visual like traditional porn and it tends to have an emotional component as well as just the mechanics. But there's certainly a market for this kind of thing.

One word: slash. It counts.

I think most people have a few odd things that turn them on, but some people seem to be cursed with a fetish that is also a powerful daily obsession. I can relate to wanting sex, and to having desires that seem weird, but this:

when the weatherman talks about "feet of snow" it can drive him mad with desire.

is pretty foreign to me. Similarly, when I think of pedophiles who feel they can't control themselves around children, I can't imagine what that feels like. We are all driven by our desires to some degree, but idea of being a helpless slave to your sexual desires sounds scary. And, the thought of being desperately obsessed with acts that are harmful to others sounds like a nightmare, relentless daily torment.

I think this is why we can condemn the acts of child abusers while simultaneously feeling sorry for people who struggle with pedophilia. They didn't ask to want what they want. It reminds me of a line from Baudelaire, "Life swarms with innocent monsters."

After reading this entire article, I feel that I haven't learned anything at all.

"What do you think is the cause of X?"

"Well I don't know."

"Fascinating! What about why some people are into Y?"

"I wouldn't care to speculate."

"How informative! What an interesting book."

Apparently there are "very few true female sadists".

What is a "true" sadist? Those who get aroused by inflicting pain on other people? Does that include those who get aroused by the effect their inflicting pain elicits in someone? I fall into the latter category, and I know plenty of women who fall into the former category.

Maybe it's because women often have a different style in these things compared to men.

And I wonder if there's a discussion about what I call "pathological sadism" - those psychopathic nutters who genuinely want to maim and kill people. What's the difference there? And is the fact I consider pedophiles to be in a similar league to the psychopaths wrong? (It's about consent, really)

Good interview, and this quote really leaped out at me:

Mead was probably partly right, but my guess is that the private place of eros within us, no matter the culture we live in, is prone to shame, because eros is a force that cultures all over the world regard with some degree of fear and attempt to constrain.

This is something many (not all) writers and posters on Broadsheet will forever refuse to understand.

One question, achilleselbow: I couldn't figure out if you support this attitude (societies of all kinds trying to control eros via shame) or if you are against it. You just said it isn't (often) understood.

An interesting book for those who want to survey the mental and social world of a foot fetishist is Matthew Styranka's The Endless Knot, in which the author describes his simultaneous exploration of sadomasochism and Zen Buddhism.

To me, fetishism is direct evidence of the importance of nurture. Not that there are no "nature" factors involved; but the nurture ones are much more obvious than is usually the case in sex. There can be no rubber, PVC or leather fetishism in a culture that still doesn't have rubber, PVC or leather. The fact that such things can get involved with so much sexual power illustrates to me how sexuality is (also) a question of docking: of associating some inborn tension/desire with some outside source for it. Our instincts are probably such that certain associations (so-called 'mainstream sexuality') are much more frequent than others; but the fact that the association has to happen, that something in the outside world has to connect to our instinctive desires, shows the importance of interaction/nurture. Like the traditional duckling that starts walking behind the farmer because the farmer was at the right place at the right time and became 'the mother' for the duckling.

Sadomasochism is, of course, the most mysterious one. Being aroused by inflicting pain implies having to fight against a moral dilemma inside one's own head ('is it true that I get off from inflicting pain to those I love?') that doesn't seem to make sense and gets glossed out as 'play' ('ah, I'm just playing... it's just a game, not for real'), which is like cheating your way out of the dilemma which still remains ('but why do I like this kind of game? why does it have to look bad in order to be good?'). And the masochist... there is something profoundly surprising about the masochist, which explains how confusing s/he is (Freud thought it was 'repressed homosexuality'...). Considering how strong the feelings associated with it are, I sometimes wonder if it is 'simply' a sexual paraphilia, or if it isn't telling us something more complicated, and perhaps darker, about human nature.

It's as the author said: many things we just don't understand. Isn't life interesting?...

It's always refreshing to read articles where not all the answers are given, but where some mysteries remain.

(Although some posters seem to be offended with the suggestion that there really are any mysteries at all...)