Valley Girl With a Brain

Oh my goodness, maybe I shouldn't have read this article, haha. I don't like any of these, though I can understand a couple. 9 and 10 kinda make sense (panties are at least related, and criminals can be the "sexy bad boy" type), 1 and 4, maybe, like the ankle thing, but 5, 6, and 8 are just completely incomprehensible to me. Another one you didn't mention that I can't understand is anything having to do with excrement. Oh, also, I'm surprised you didn't mention bestiality in your top 10. That's pretty weird.

The only group of people in the U.S. still legally subjected to Physical/Corporal Punishment in the 21st Century are children in schools in 20 states. It is ILLEGAL for school employees to hit children with WOODEN PADDLES to punish them in schools in 30 states. At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.”

The TRUTH is that school children are treated differently in our great nation based on where they live. A middle school student in Texas DIED by having his chest crushed when his teacher sat on him to restrain him, a Texas high school student suffered deep bruising and welts to his lower back, buttocks and back of his legs when he received 21 "licks" with a wooden canoe paddle, which broke during the beating and had to be taped to continue the beating, a 9-year old Georgia 3rd grader suffered deep bruising injuries when he was paddled with a WOODEN PADDLE 3 TIMES IN ONE DAY (Decatur Co., GA affirmed Corporal Punishment Policy 9/17/09 for school children) and a Publicly Funded Charter School in Memphis, Tennessee physically punishes middle/high school boys and GIRLS weekly during a ceremony called "Chapel" by hitting them with wooden paddles and/or whipping their hands with leather straps IN FRONT OF ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS AS A DETERRENT to publicly induce shame, humiliation and fear! The school employees in the above actions have LEGAL IMMUNITY and are STILL paid by our tax-dollars to be ENTRUSTED with the care and education of our children!

A recent news headline reads, “Nearly 60,000 spankings in Miss. schools last year." "Ouch! For the second time in a month, a school district in Leflore County has been hit with a $500,000 (each) lawsuit from a student alleging injuries from a paddling. It was reported that a state legal adviser, who told Bristol, Tennessee Director of Schools Gary Lilly that while school principals who paddled students were legally protected from allegations of assault, they were not immune from accusations of inappropriate or improper touching. School boards are asking for trouble to sanction a practice that is intended to inflict pain. Make no mistake: beating schoolchildren on their pelvic area with a wooden board causes more problems than it corrects -- if it corrects any at all. Teacher-training programs do not include instruction in the "correct method" for hitting students. Zero tolerance for weapons and violence is the standard that should apply to everyone in educational settings. Teachers included What corporal punishment does accomplish is to degrade the teaching profession, drive good people away, and make the teaching field a safe haven for the dangerously unfit. Its net effect on schools is a negative one. The more that schools indulge in paddling, the higher the dropout rate, along with all the social ills that follow, e.g., gang activity, addiction, mental health problems, domestic violence, incarceration, unemployment, etc. The time is long over due for our lawmakers and education policy makers to apply the zero-tolerance rule universally. When paddlers complain, as some inevitably will, they should be advised to look beyond their classroom walls and see how schoolchildren are managed violence free throughout the civilized world. They should look and learn from the 30 states where corporal punishment in schools is forbidden by law. U.S. Congress held hearings on Abusive and DEADLY practices in SCHOOLS and MUST ABOLISH Corporal Punishment of Children in Schools, the cost $0.

You seem to have FAILED in making your correlation between the actual topic and your subject matter. Although...the fact that Texas and other southern states still beat kids doesn't surprise me at all.

What I really wanted to point out (now that I've got your attention) is that there's an entirely different take on the Gary Brooks:

...in America and Europe, men's libidos are constantly being aggravated and stimulated. Soda ads, short skirts, magazine covers, beer commercials, ruthlessly stimulate his sex. His relentless exposure to things feminine keeps him in a constant state of sexual arousal -- a testosterone nightmare of cruel pervasiveness which is not known in 'primitive' societies.
- Rich Zubaty

This puts a new spin on the statement about this having "gained mainstream acceptance".

The mind creates everything and takes it for real, it thus makes sense that it can create endless fetishes since the mind can make endless associations.

Fetishes are real and they are not, just like the rest of the world.

I wouldn't be so quick to claim that lingerie is a fetish. I think it's the mystery that a partially clothed woman gives off as opposed to a completely naked women.

9. Panty fetish: sexual arousal from panties. In Japan, vending machines and Burusera shops sell used school girl panties.

This is no longer true, it was seen as an unhealthy practice and stopped.

As a professional in the mental health field, did the author ever stop to think how categorizing these fetishes as the "most weird" or "unpleasant" would affect those people who have them [the fetishes]? As a publication used and read by professionals and individuals looking for facts, Psychology Today has a responsibility not to marginalize or stigmatize the mentally ill for laughs. Someone with one of these fetishes, who is impaired by it and who has suffered negative self-image and relationship problems over it, would find this article as proof that they are "weird" and less-than. I am disappointed.

It's unfortunate at how easily people are conditioned to a behavior. WIth so many advertisements and pornography gaining social acceptance men and women are being conditioned to expect certain fantasies and "fetishes." Your article states, "According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), it is only when a person is experiencing 'fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors [which] cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational functioning.'" The increase in 'fetish' oriented sex is directly related the increase in failed marriages. Not being able to appropriately fulfill spousal sexual responsibilities is social dysfunction. Not only do people condition themselves to expect 'fantasy' and 'fetish' style sex, but they condition themselves to only become aroused by images and videos... that's unfortunate. Especially when a countless number of counseling offices are filled with sobbing women who are sad, hurt and embarrassed that they can no longer arouse their spouse or significant other, who says... "I'd just rather masturbate." That's pathetic. I'm not saying lets get prudish, but a little modesty never hurt anyone... and stop having sex with amputees and like infants!

http://socyberty.com/psychology/the-stroop-effect-why-it-works/

I think that this article is quite sexually odd. People should not like people for things so odd as this. I gotta say this is pretty damn hot. (wolf whistle) pce

As a previous poser correctly said: Number 9 is wrong. Legal action was taken over 5 years to end this. Yet again it seems that an uncorroborated unquoted English media report about those 'wacky Japanese' is used to try to substantiate the unproven. Neither this article nor Psychology Today stands alone in this practice. However I think that it is worth remembering that the 'www'in: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog means World Wide Web" and that in Japan too, as well as many other countries around the world, millions of people have very high reading skills in English skills and could find this kind of writing offensive or even racist in tone.

All the best from Tokyo,

#7 has to be the strangest...

Have you tried bondage? Ive put many an asian girls in tricky ties, let me know if u ever in town jen! ;o)

Have you tried bondage? Ive put many an asian girls in tricky ties, let me know if u ever in town jen! ;o)

I once had a girlfriend who had what I suppose could be termed a gas mask fetish. Nothing turned her on more than to see me in a specific kind of mask. She had a fair sized collection of the things.

The only one on this list I thought was actually weird is the crush fetishism. The only way I could see that as sexy is if a person had a foot fetish and he or she enjoyed seeing the partner crush a cupcake [or something else sweet and delicious], to lick it off or something. Crushing an animal is cruel [maybe that's the turn-on???].

Only a bourgeois, middle-class American would create such a boring and mundane list list of Top 10 Weird Fetishes!

Seriously, if you are going to establish such a list, at least do some persona, if not professional, research. I am a professional dominatrix, and I can assure you and your readers that some of the fetishes that have made your list are amongst the most "vanilla" and ordinary garden variety.

What a disappointment!

You've listed two things as one here. Animal transformation is one thing, the 'Furry' fetish is another. Though overlap is common, it's an error to say they are the same thing, and indeed, lumping the two together may cause offense.