How Porn Induces Sexual Fetishes - And What You Can Do About Your Fetish
I’ve lost track of how many times someone has asked me, with great anxiety, shame, and concern, about what to do about a fetish that they have developed as a result of watching porn. Countless men who struggle with porn addiction and compulsive porn use to wonder if they’re going to be stuck with their fetish forever. Some men wonder how porn induces sexual fetishes in the first place.
Mostly, those who have developed fetishes just want to know what to do about it. If you’ve developed a fetish that you think is the result of watching porn, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive into understanding fetishes, how porn induces sexual fetishes, and what you can do about unwanted fetishes.
What Is a Sexual Fetish?
A fetish is a sexual attraction to or erotic fixation on an object or body part, one that is not usually sexual. A person can have a fetish for feet, breasts, clothing, animals, high heels, latex, leather, skin color, anime, or just about anything else. With porn, a fetish is usually a strong attraction or preference for a very particular genre or porn or sexual act (e.g., superhero or stepsister porn).
A fetish, by definition, eliminates the human dimension of the other person by substituting a part (e.g., feet) for the whole individual. As psychoanalyst Andrea Celenza (2014) states in her book Erotic Revelations, this is “the opposite of healthy striving for integrative, embodied relational experience” (p. 126).
Most often, porn-induced fetishes function this way so that they are fixed and feel non-playful and deadening, but it’s important to note that fetishes can also be playful, fluid, and a part of healthy sexual play between partners. For example, a partner may channel his attraction to leather by buying his lover leather lingerie or a harness so that she feels more desired and their sexual enjoyment mutually increases.
How Porn Induces Sexual Fetishes
Pornography can create sexual fetishes in two ways: sexual imprinting and what I call overlearning, which occurs as pornography use progresses in intensity.
Sexual Imprinting
Sexual imprinting refers to how our sexual preferences are formed by our first sexual experiences and what we are first exposed to sexually. A person’s earliest sexual experiences will affect what’s called her arousal template, or a “map” of everything that is sexually exciting to that individual.
For example, an old college professor of mine told a story in class about a man whose sister walked on him in high heels when he was an early adolescent, which he found intensely erotic. Now, the professor explained, he can only come to orgasm when his partner walks on him while wearing high heels.
In porn addiction forums online, I read all the time about teenagers who say that they have compulsively used porn and masturbation for years, starting very young. The average age for first exposure to pornography used to be 11 years old, but I imagine that it’s likely more accurate these days to say that it’s under 10 years old for most boys.
That boys are exposed to porn that young and that what they are exposed to is so much more graphic and explicit than the Playboys most men my age grew up means that this first exposure can powerfully affect one’s arousal template and sexual development.
Overlearning
Like other addictions, porn addiction can progress and escalate in intensity and severity over time. Just like the drinker who needs more alcohol to produce the same effect, so too those who struggle with compulsive porn use can consume pornography for longer periods of time and more frequently. But often, the same old porn just doesn’t do it for them anymore. This is called tolerance, and it happens when a porn addict gets bored with the porn they’ve usually viewed. Such tolerance can cause the person to seek out novel and different forms and types of pornography. After all, the brain loves novelty.
So, the man who gets bored with heterosexual pornography may turn to gay porn. Or one may start looking into anime porn or hentai porn. Or BDSM porn. Or porn featuring transvestites. Or anything else, really. The more one views this particular type of pornography, the more this behavior is reinforced and the stronger the neuropathways in the brain become.
Learning happens when we associate a stimulus with a reward. Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell with food so that they salivated when they heard the bell before any food was presented. The dog’s brain’s reward systems were firing when they heard the bell, and grooves in the brain (neuropathways) formed in response. As the saying goes, what fires together wires together.
When someone who compulsively uses pornography then repeatedly views a particular form of pornography, he is essentially training his brain to respond sexually to that stimulus. With repeated exposure to a particular genre of pornography, for example, what started as a novel means of achieving sexual arousal can lead to the development of a sexual fetish as the brain “overlearns” to associate the sexual material with excitement.
What to Do If You Have a Porn-Induced Fetish
How do you know if you have a porn-induced fetish? You may find yourself asking questions such as:
“I watch gay porn; does it mean that I’m gay?” (not necessarily. It may just means that your porn use is progressing and that you’ve developed a tolerance to heterosexual porn)
“Why can’t I get hard with my partner?” (overexposure to porn reinforces porn as the only source of sexual excitement so that arousal with real partners is harder to achieve)
“I’m only turned on by __________ videos. What’s going on?” (have a look-see above)
“I’m not even interested in sex anymore. How do I get rid of my fetish?” (have a look-see below)
If you have a porn-induced fetish, there’s good news. If you can abstain from viewing the pornography that reinforces the fetish, you’ll stop reinforcing the sexual attraction, and the fetish will eventually diminish so that it may extinguish altogether and disappear entirely.
With time, the neuropathways that were created in response to your pornography use and formed around your fetish will wither, much like an unused path that will eventually fall into disrepair and become grown over with weeds. It’s important to nurture new, healthy, and growing sexual experiences as you abstain from porn so that you can learn to have relational, healthy sexual pleasure that is more integrated into your life (instead of being shame-based and secretive).
About The Author
Jeremy Mast is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, and the founder and director of the Center for Integrative Change. He is passionate about helping those struggling with substance use and problematic sexual behaviors and their loved ones find lasting healing. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, rock climbing, health and fitness, and trying out new recipes while cooking at home.