Ever felt weird about the things that turn you on?
Thanks to generations of sexual suppression, talking about sex is not something most people do in casual conversation.
This conservative attitude to sex can make it hard for people to accept the urges they start to feel as they enter adult life. Of course here at Manhattan Terrace we are very much against putting the label ‘normal’ on anyone’s leanings in the bedroom, but we also think people may be surprised how common some of thing that turn them on are.
Below is a list of the 15 most common sexual fetishes, to make you feel a little less weird. And maybe, if you’re game, give you the confidence to try something different next time you’re between the sheets.
10 most common fetishes from around the world
- Exhibitionism
A lot of people like to be watched.
Exhibitionism can take many forms from simply exposing yourself to others, to being watched while having sex.
Of course, every country would have some type of indecent exposure laws, making public exhibitionism a crime (fairly so, in our opinion, you should never force your fetish on someone who hasn’t previously agreed).
But between consenting adults, there is absolutely nothing wrong or unusual about a bit of performance, if that’s what floats your boat. - Voyerism
The flip side of the exhibitionist coin.
While some people like to be watched, others prefer to be the audience. A match made in heaven some might say.
This should be of no real surprise seeing as the porn industry functions on the idea that there is a little bit of voyeurism in everyone - Transvestic
A bit more of a tricky area, as the idea of donning the opposite gender’s clothes for sexual arousal is tied up with the idea of people who have been born in the wrong bodies and therefore not a fetish as such.
However, there is also people who feel perfectly comfortable the way they were born and just get turned on dressing in the clothes usually worn by the other gender.
Transvestic fetishism is most common in men but was found to exist in over a quarter of all participants of an internet study in 2006. - Swinging and Group Sex
One thing reinforced more than anything else by the prudish sexual attitudes of the Victorian era is the idea that a relationship is a union between a single man and a single woman.
Of course, in practice this is likely to have never been the case.
To be 100% honest, we would say that the desire to have sex with, or at least be attracted to, more than one person would be more accurately classified as general human behaviour rather than a fetish. However we include it here as a reminder that sex and love are different things and there is nothing wrong with wanting more than one partner (as long as all the relevant parties agree). - Lingerie and Stockings
A common fetish among men (although women are not completely excluded) is the attraction to lingerie or just underwear in general.
The fetish can range anywhere from: wanting to see the opposite sex dressed in lingerie, dressing in it themselves or simply touching or smelling underwear.
If you’ve heard one the news reports that crop up from time to time about a serial panty-thief being caught, you might get some idea just how common this fetish is.
At Manhattan Terrace, we don’t condone going out and stealing other people’s property, but if your urge for underwear is strong, know at least that you are not alone. - BDSM
Responsible for a massive and sprawling subculture, bdsm is too diverse a fetish to sum up in a few a short sentences, but essentially what it boils down to is people who like to be dominant and people who like to be submissive and disciplined.
If this sounds familiar to you, you shouldn’t be surprised. According to a survey done by Alfred Kinsey half of men and more than half of women have at least some response to ideas in the bdsm culture. - Spanking
Spanking and other forms of light force as a fetish is a lot more common than many people would like to admit.
One theory behind the prevalence of spanking has proposed the hitting of the area where your buttocks meets your thigh stimulates an erogenous zone. Other theories link it to more psychological factors, stirring up ideas from childhood of being ‘naughty’.
As with everything else on this list, we don’t really care much for the analysis. All you really need to know is, if it feels good - do it!
- Shoes
When it comes to clothing fetishes, fetishes involving shoes are easily the most common.
Though high-heels and boots are the type of footwear that feature most prominently in these kinds of fetishes, shoes of all kind can set people off. This is something that is even prevalent in mainstream culture, with women’s shoes often being marketed a sexy and desirable.
- Leather and Latex
Linked strongly with bdsm fetishism, the wearing of leather, latex, PVC and rubber is a fetish all of its own.
At its core, this is a clothing fetish, with sexual experts speculating the tight and shiny materials appeal to people’s sexual urges as it highlight the shape of a person’s body while lending a transformative sense of otherness to the wearer.
Whatever the reasons you like it, it doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that there is hundreds of thousands of other leather and latex brothers and sisters around the world that are in to the exact same thing as you. - Feet.
An internet study had findings that over half of people have a fetish related to a particular part of the human body. For this group, nearly half fetishise the feet.
Although is seen as shorthand in popular culture as the trait of the weird and hopeless - a person being turned on by rubbing, tickling, smelling, kissing, biting, licking and sucking someone’s toes or feet (or having it done to them) is consistently one of the most common fetishes that comes up in lists and studies.
One scientist has even suggested the arousal some people get from feet play could be biological, with the areas of the brain responsible for sensory feeling in the feet and genitals being close together, giving you a pleasurable crosstalk of sensation when touched.
So that’s the list of ten.
Any of them match up with you? Or maybe you’ve got a different proclivity we didn’t list?
In the end the point of the list is not to determine what is normal and what is unusual. There isn’t a human on the planet that isn’t weird in one way or another, whether they want to admit it or not.
So as long as you aren’t hurting anyone else, breaking any laws or doing anything unsafe, we say next time you feel a new and unexplored urge, don’t push it down into the subconscious. Embrace and explore it - trust us you’ll feel better for it!
