fetish, genderIt seems that, especially in popular media, men are more often portrayed as having particular sexual fetishes than women, so I’m just wondering if there’s any truth to that notion in real life.
There is the theory of sexual plasticity (also this and this) which essentially says that women are more likely to form, and continually reform, their sexuality based on their surroundings. Conversely, the theory holds that men’s sexuality pretty much is set during childhood and stays pretty fixed. The book Sex at Dawn mentions stories of men having lost their ability to produce testosterone, which basically causes them to stop exhibiting aberrant sexual behavior and fetishes. The book has an example involving animals which could be aligned to this theory.
This theory has a lot of criticism and shouldn’t be taken as confirmed truth in any way.
From my experience, perverts are a fairly even split of genders - in fact amongst the younger london scene there are more women than men and certainly women tend to be more open to try more things, especially in terms of same-sex partners. Generally the men I’ve come into contact with can often be worried about perceptions of “being gay” with respect to a number of sexual kinks, including pegging and anal fisting.
There are reasons for why men and women might have different outward attitudes to kink, and this is all very broad brush strokes, ultimately each person comes to kink / BDSM through a series of happenstances which are very much a product of their lives - it’s very hard to generalise!
It’s also difficult to know whether one has a kink until one knows it exists. You need to see or (better) experience something in order to know whether you like it or not.
But, if we must, here are some broad brush strokes for you:
Women are brought up to be more sexually aware and more aware of themselves as sexualised beings (for good or for ill). For example, Ann Summers - UK high street sex shop - caters for women rather than men, the sex shops that do exist for men tend to be the more “secretive” and seedy porn outlets. The more open and overt a sex shop for men, the more likely it is to be for the gay market. Because women are more comfortable with their sexuality they are more likely to experiment.
On the flip side, men are socially conditioned to “take the lead” and be more dominant - whether they are sexually dominant or not, which is another question for another time - so may seek out or initiate new types of sex in order to maintain this appearance. There is evidence that men buy more porn than women (possibly because there is more porn made for men than for women, so it’s all a bit academic) and porn has increasingly shown more “extreme” and kinky types of sex, so men are likely to be aware of, and perhaps interest in trying it out.
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