At what point does it become a fetish ?

[badreligion]

Just run with me on this one . I was talking to this girl I know and the subject of tickling was brought up and she said she loved to be tickled and tickle people and I just said as a joke " Maybe you have a tickling fetish " and she responded no she didnt she just thought it was fun to do . So it got me thinking , at what point does it crossover from something normal to the fetish stage ?

 

[luvgirlsfeet]

i think that it becomes a fetish when it's something you do more often than anything else. For example if your female friend likes to tickle/be tickled once in awhile comapred to wanting to be tickled or tickling as often as possible. forgive me if i'm wrong but its the best answer i can think of

 

[Artoo]

I guess it becomes a fetish when it stops being "just good fun", and it turns you on.

 

[badreligion]

I guess it becomes a fetish when it stops being "just good fun", and it turns you on.

Yea but some people don't find it to be a sexual thing they just find it to be good fun but still consider them selfs to have a tickle fetish so how do you tell when its a fetish or not

 

[Kalba]

The term fetish has a general meaning and a clinical one

I agree that generally it's been used to indicate a strong interest or need. The clinical definition isn't so kind. It's a form of paraphilia, a class of mental disorders, where an object like a shoe or a foot is required for sexual arousal. The additional aspect of the clinical definition is that it has to result in some dysfunction in your life, probably something most people who use the term loosely wouldn't agree with. My 2 cents.

Kalba

 

[Ghris]

I've always defined it as follows:

A fetish is something you need for sexual arousal. Sex (or sexual acts) will either be impossible or considerably less fulfilling without it.

A kink, on the other hand, is just something you enjoy doing during sex (or sexual acts) that is outside the norm. It is not required, by any means, and is merely a fun addition to everything else.

However, I would say a kink could evolve into a fetish if whoever it was kept doing it without any breaks - sort of like conditioning.

 

[Scouse]

Fetish - When you look it up on the internet.

 

[Skipadeedoodah]

Fetish - When you look it up on the internet.

QFTW

 

[xSamanthax]

I've always defined it as follows:

A fetish is something you need for sexual arousal. Sex (or sexual acts) will either be impossible or considerably less fulfilling without it.

A kink, on the other hand, is just something you enjoy doing during sex (or sexual acts) that is outside the norm. It is not required, by any means, and is merely a fun addition to everything else.

This ^ (imo of course)

 

[Skipadeedoodah]

My interpretation of the OP wasn't exactly asking what makes it a fetish in the clinical sense of the word. I think it was more, what separates "us", people who like it enough to join a fetish forum (regardless of if tickling is sexual for us as individuals) and "them", people who just enjoy tickling in life in general.

 

[Excess]

It becomes a fetish when you decide to make it one. <_<

Or more specifically, when you start actively seaking it out (heheh...Seaking...) knowing that it can get you off.

 

[sasaxrah]

Do think about it when you jerk off? Does it help you orgasm?

Then it's a fetish.

 

[Aimee]

You join the TMF.
okay no that's not true. but, if you are looking up something that obviously interests you enough to type it in google and join a site ... at that point you should seriously start considering where you stand.

 

[Kalba]

More specifically, in the clinical definition

Do think about it when you jerk off? Does it help you orgasm?

Then it's a fetish.

Can you jerk off without it? Is it an object (like a shoe or a foot)? If not, it ain't a fetish, it's something else, at least clinically.

Kalba

fwiw, it's a fool's errand to keep referring to a healthy interest in tickling as a fetish. But is that what we are going to keep on doing??? ? yeah ... more's the pity. 🙄

 

[marcusb]

By defintion, When you need it for sexual satisfaction. Otherwise, it's just a kinky interest.

The label is used incorrectly here (on TMF), IMO.

 

[OmahaTickler]

Generally, a fetish does involve objects, not body parts. Favoring a body part is called partialism, or at least it used to be. The word "fetish," though, has become idiomatic and now connotes body parts as well.

I would be a full-fledged partialist/fetishist. I can't get off without having just tickled, or unless I've just watched tickling porn, or if I see a woman in public in sandals and I fantasize her going home and being tickled by a spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend.

Here's Freud's twisted view:

"In 1905, in his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud offered one theory to account for this behavior. In his view, the fetish originated with the male child's horror of female castration. Confronted with the mother's lack of a penis, the child represses this lack and finds some object to stand in for and substitute for the missing penis, thus relieving the anxiety and restoring in a displaced way) the erotic attachment to the female. The act involves not only finding a substitute object, but also a subsequent act of forgetting the act of substitution. For Freud, the fetish is a kind of creative denial, a sort of magical thinking that helps the fetishist ward off anxiety and restore a sense of well-being, all the while producing a kind of amnesia. Of course, this theory does not really help explain why some men become sexual fetishists and others do not. Nor does it explain how or why a woman might develop a fetish."

 

[rhiannon]

I think nowadays a lot of people use "fetish" for their sexual preferrence even if they can have sex without their kink. It has just become a pretty common term. I call my preferrence a fetish myself, because I think it shows stronger that it is indeed something sexual to me. But I am far away from the clinical definition of fetish.

 

[Adam]

I'll put it this way. I think about tickling more than I do sex. I'd say that's when it becomes pretty gosh-durned obvious.

 

[CuteJill143]

Lol Time to grab my abnormal psychology textbook definition...

Key features of fetishism are recurrent sexual urges, sexually arousing fantasies, or behaviors that involve the use of a non-living object, often to the exclusion of all other stimuli. Usually the disorder begins in adolescence. Almost anything can be a fetish


Wow. Whoever calls it a "disorder" has no idea what they are missing! This textbook I thought was pretty offensive about a lot of topics. This next quote also got me a little heated! "Some Psychodynamic theorists views fetishism as defense mechanisms that help people avoid the anxiety produced by "normal" sexual contact." What a load of SH*T! Who the hell are they? And who the hell gets to decide what is "normal" or "abnormal?" WOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! They have to ruin things that are enjoyable to some people by giving it a fancy name and calling it a disorder! But I think a fetish goes way beyond liking something. It is a fixation. I know people who enjoy tickling but aren't fetishists so its possible. It might be easier getting those people into though than somebody who hates it.

 

[Coda]

I define a fetish as a prominent turn-on; a particular sexual interest. I don't define it as something required for orgasm, although I'm aware that's an existing definition.

It's currently not possible, I think, to use the word "fetish" and be precisely understood without clarification.

 

[RavenMoon]

Lol Time to grab my abnormal psychology textbook definition...

...Wow. Whoever calls it a "disorder" has no idea what they are missing! This textbook I thought was pretty offensive about a lot of topics....

There is a movement to remove paraphilias, fetishes and other widely accepted sexual abnormalities from the "disorder" definitions. Or at least to abridge them to recognize the fact that these "abnormalities" are not disorders until they interrupt the normal functioning of an individual.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Fetish" is a word that has become commonly used to define a lesser degree of attraction to an act/object than it clinically is defined as. And it has come to be commonly accepted in that function as well. I write regarding sexuality and have come across the arguements time and time again. Bottom line, words, when they come into common and frequent use for other things will take on that definition as well. Take the word "cool" for example. Similar discussions would have taken place in that era as well regarding the slang definition of it as well.

Yes, clinically, tickling is not a fetish, it is a paraphilia. A paraphilia, in its loose definition, is something that creates sexual arousal or attraction in a person. A fetish, in its loose definition, is an object/an objectification that is needed to sustain sexual arousal.

In the common, slang if you will, usage of fetish, I believe tickling would be considered a fetish if it is something that arouses you. It is a passion if you spend time thinking about it, looking at related materials or talking about it, whether or not it arouses you. It is an obsession if you find it taking a large amount of your time (and it does not relate to your work or studies). It is unhealthy when it starts to keep you from functioning fully in society.

I would say that for us here on the forum it is at least a passion. I know that the reason many of us, myself included, are here is because we crave to interact with others who understand what we enjoy. As humans, we crave to surround ourselves with those who are like us. Hence forums like this one.

Thats my two cents and then some...

 

[xionking]

Just run with me on this one . I was talking to this girl I know and the subject of tickling was brought up and she said she loved to be tickled and tickle people and I just said as a joke " Maybe you have a tickling fetish " and she responded no she didnt she just thought it was fun to do . So it got me thinking , at what point does it crossover from something normal to the fetish stage ?

Probably when you start getting sexually aroused in a big way from tickling or being tickled.

-Xionking