Friday, June 22, 2007

The strangest map you'll ever navigate: the "Deviant Desires" guide to fetishes


In line with this week's episode, which is a vintage show from 1999 that surveys the Internet with a focus on the very interesting and shall we say unusual twin obessions of the "furry" lifestyle and "plush love." This brought me in mind of one of the more unusual URLs I have sent around to friends in the past few years, the wonderful guide to unusual fetishes found on Katharine Gates' wonderful website Deviant Desires. Her "road map" to fetishes appears at the URL below. (If you can't find it at the URL, click on the image above to read it more clearly.) I did notice that one or two stray items are missing, but the ones she has included — specific suckers like "bug bites," "sun burn," and the glorious "clown shoes" — more than make up. Also, I should note that she was interviewed on the legendary Midnight Blue some years back and was asked bluntly by host Al Goldstein what the "strangest" fetish she'd encountered was. Since she didn't want to be derogatory about her field of study, she simply noted the one that surprised her the most: men who could only have an orgasm when a balloon was popping. She did not specify how many men have this fetish (and if it does indeed relate to the plate-smashing one on her chart; for that matter, do these balloon gentlemen get raging hard-ons every time they hear gunshots?). Many items on here are head-scratchers, but they are glorious ones. Minutes of research, and bemused laughter, should ensue. The road map of fetishes

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