Fetishes and what they say about you

In 2015, a man was caught have sex with

a tractor, turns out he'd had sex with

450 tractors and his personal computer

was found with hundreds of images of

tractor fetish porn.

I mean I can't blame him we've all seen cars scientists have

recently been studying fetishes in very

unique ways to try and understand if

there are physical changes in the brains

of those with fetishes.

Like if you don't have a fetish, is your brain different

than those who do? And trying to figure

out how it might relate to the

algorithms made by tech companies which

are potentially now controlling your

sexual urges any form of sexual arousal.

Whether it involves a fetish or not

follows four physiological steps.

Step 1: neuronal processing of information

by the brain leading to,

Step 2: Arousal neuronal excitation in your body that

may cause you to sweat be on high alert

and in some instances get hard nipples.

Step 3: Incentive motivation, consciously

or subconsciously deciding if you are

going to continue your excited state and…

Step 4: General response, we're talking

boners we're talking engorged labias. You

know what I mean, that was a scientific

explanation of getting turned on, and

what turns you on will vary from person

to person and sometimes involves a

fetish which is when the sexual arousal

process begins due to neuronal

processing of a non-genital body part or

inanimate object, for example being

attracted to an inanimate object like a tractor.

Tractor fetish is being attracted

to a non-genital body part like feet

foot fetish. One study relying only on

observational data try to explain why

people were so attracted to armpits.

Armpit fetish and they hypothesize, it's

because armpits mimic genitals. Armpits

like genitals are covered in coarse hair,

excrete secretions and odors.

So although technically armpits are a non-genital

body part it may be a common fetish

because your brain kind of thinks of the

armpit as a genital. Now that academic

text feels like a mandatory reading for

all University students am I right?

A variety of studies from the 90s tried to

claim that radishes were more common in

men than in women but recent surveys

have found no statistically significant

difference between the number of males

or females, or anything in between.

Who have fetishes but algorithms and tech

companies may be impacting this more on

that later. One thing that still holds up

to academic scrutiny is that the most

common fetishes involve your feet.

A 2007 study of 5 000 people found feet or

objects related to feet, such as shoes to

be the most common fetish and another

study of thousands of people found that

two-thirds of fetishes relate to Feet

socks or shoes.

The reason foot fetishes are so common is actually a hot debate

within the scientific community. One

Theory involves your S1 brain touch map.

The brain folds in your brain right

under your skull. Here is where

neurons conglomerate to process the

feelings of touch.

You'll notice that the neurons that detect touch for toes and

feet are physically right beside the

neurons that detect touch for your

genitals. For this reason some

neuroscientists posit that the

physiological overlap in the S1 touch

brain map neurons of defeat and genitals

maybe why so many people are turned on

by both.

Another study on amputees who

lost their feet found that they would

feel Phantom sexual pleasure in their

missing feet, sometimes even feeling

orgasms from their missing feet. One

theory is that after amputation, the

brain's plasticity and rewiring in the

S1 touch brain map with overlapping

neurons in foot and genital portions of

the brain lobe, made the missing feet

feel sexual.

There are also some other competing ideas around this including

some evolutionary biologists thinking

that deriving pleasure from having your

feet touched might encourage you to keep

them clean and free from parasites.

Essentially sexual pleasure from feet

was maybe evolved to keep you healthy by

increasing hygiene around your feet. I

really hope that when I die I come back

as an evolutionary biologist who studies

how horny humans are none of these.

Theories are rooted in fact, it's

scientists positing hypothesis around

why we're so turned on by feet and it's

leading us to understand that fetishes

are very complicated and really hard to

study. So the ways that scientists are

actually studying them is going into rap models.

A study using two groups of

sexually naive Lab Rats had one group where a small velcro jacket during their first sexual experiences then the other

group a control War.

None when sexually mature, the control group displayed

normal copulation behavior whether

wearing the jacket or not. Whereas the

jacket group went without their velcro

jacket were unable to achieve sexual

arousal.

A separate study had one group

of male rat pups lie on bedding scented

with lemon, the other group was unscented.

For their first sexual experience they

had the option of two sexually receptive

females, one scented with lemon one

Without.

The control group mated with the

two females with the same frequency,

while the lemon group preferred the

lemon scented female. Interestingly the

attraction to these specific features

conditions and smells could be blocked

by naloxone, known for its use in opioid overdose.

Naloxone blocks endorphins from

binding to the opioid receptors in your

brain thus blocking the sexual reward

that is attributed with the velcro

jacket or the smell of the lemons.

Either way, the sexual reward for the rats

started to be related to objects like a

velcro jacket or scents like the smell

of lemon extrapolating to humans. This

means that fetishes may be created

through neuroplasticity and exposure to

a variety of things outside of genitalia

that start to turn humans on.

Exposure and brain plasticity is the same reason

why some social scientists think that

tech companies are actually starting to

control our sexual urges with algorithms

based on what we're seeing on the

Internet. To start a paper called Beyond

sexual orientation explains how for the

first time in history, our sexual arousal

and desires are now contained as data

online.

Whether you are downloading the

app Grindr and disclosing your sexual

fetishes openly with the drop down

options of leather or feet or you are

simply searching for specific porn on

your browser, tech companies house the

data of our private and public desires.

Me downloading Grindr in Canada may feel

safe but in another country where

homosexuality is illegal, this could be a

dangerous app download that now these

tech companies have awareness and

control of.

Same goes with searching for

porn when looking at the top 100

searches on PornHub, 16 of them are

incest theme for men and nine are incest

themed for women and five percent of all

porn searches among men are for gay porn.

But survey data and Facebook reports

show that only two to three percent of

men identify as gay in the right hands.

Of course this information is safe but

as tech companies use algorithms to grow

interest in their platforms, they take

your interest and try to create

experiences on the internet that cater

to you. This means that they're exposing

you to things that they think you'll be

interested in and this could be changing

your brain.

If we look specifically at

online porn one study using fmri brain

scans of 28 men with excessive online

porn use and 24 men without it, it was

found that there was a physical change

in the ventral stereom men who were

excessively watching porn online. This is

the part of the brain linked to wanting

and involves dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved to our

evolution and survival. It makes us crave

the things we need to survive, like food,

love, friendship but also two things

related to porn, which are novelty and

sex.

Surfing porn for long periods of

time will keep the dopamine levels high

and physically distort the ventrals

triatum in your brain as tech companies

figure out ways to keep you online

whether it's the thirst traps on your

Instagram Explorer page or simply typing

in a sexual interest on Tick Tock.

You're now going to get more information and

exposure which could be altering the way

you see and perceive sex online and in

real life. On top of this, a lot of online

content is considered a super normal

stimulus, meaning online bodies sex acts

and even food are exaggerated versions

of normal stimuli.

These online images and algorithms amplify these

qualities that make them more appealing

than the real thing. Studies with birds

show that adding fake supernormal vivid

spotted plaster eggs to a nest, makes a

mother rather sit on it, than a real more

pale colored egg or male Jewel beetles

will rather copulate with a beer bottle

cap, as the dimpled bottoms are more

intriguing than a real beetle.

In a new survey found that 82 percent of people

failed when trying to stop watching the

super normal stimulus of online

pornography, social scientists and

neuroscientists are working hard right

now trying to figure out how all of this

online content could be altering our

brains.

But outside of the menacing way

that algorithms and the internet can

work sometimes, consensual sex is amazing

and fetishes can be a really exciting

part of sex but we all know as our sex

lives and our sexual interests go more

online, we give more opportunity for

these internet companies and these large

corporations using algorithms to kind of

control the way that we feel and see

sexual urges in real life.