I’m a guy who has a foot fetish and is also a microphile. And no, I’m not one of THOSE foot fetish guys…you know the ones I’m talking about. The creepy, obsessive guys who shove their fetish in everyone’s faces and appear to have no sense of personal boundaries (kind of like some of the guys who are into giantess content). Those guys make me cringe whenever I see them.
Regarding women with fetishes struggling to be heard, I wonder if that might not be a blessing in disguise. (Although I’m sure it’s still frustrating for female fetishists when they’re on the receiving end of certain assumptions, and I don’t mean to minimize that.) Here’s what I mean when I say it’s potentially a blessing. Society has a lot of negative labels for people with sexual proclivities that are considered undesirable. For instance, if I say the word “rapist” or “molester” or “pedophile,” people will immediately assume I’m talking about a man, not a woman. If I say “pervert,” people will assume I’m talking about a man. If I allude to someone being overly “enthusiastic” about anything sexual, people will assume I’m talking about a man unless I say otherwise. The word “fetishist” is kind of like the word “pervert”…it’s a label that generally thought of as something negative and undesirable. Again, if I say “fetishist,” people assume I’m talking about a man…it’s a word that describes “undesirable” sexual behavior, so the fact that people instinctively associate it with men is not surprising. It follows the same pattern as the other negative labels that have to do with sex. Sure, Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish gets a lot of press and a lot of visibility, but at the cost of being the butt of a lot of jokes.
My point is that I think some people might shy away from recognizing women’s fetishes because they don’t like the idea of putting a traditionally male and traditionally negative or “gross” label on women. It seems like people are usually more reluctant to think of women as being “gross” or having gross attributes. A lot of them seem to be very attached to the idea that women are “sugar and spice and everything nice”–the idea that women are pure and innocent and not gross–and they don’t give up those ideas very easily. They don’t really want to believe that women are capable of “undesirable” behaviors in the same way men are. It ruins the sentimental illusion for them…kind of like going to Disney World and seeing the guy in the Mickey Mouse costume taking a break, smoking a cigarette with his giant cartoon head removed. An example: when you hear news stories about female middle school teachers sleeping with their male students, people are usually far more reluctant to call those teachers pedophiles, or to label it as an act of sexual assault, or to call the male students rape victims. If it were a male teacher with a female student, it would be a very different story.
Is it frustrating when people have these very common perceptions about women? Yes, it certainly can be, for a variety of reasons. But I think it could also be considered an unintentional compliment, depending on how you look at it. Personally, I’d rather have people give me the benefit of the doubt and be slow to jump to conclusions, instead of having them assume all sorts of negative things about me and label me a “deviant” if they ever suspect that I like feet, or if they suspect that I like tiny women. So for that reason, I’d call it a mixed blessing.
I say this a lot, but as always, I could be wrong.