Fetishes, Gender Roles, Monogamy (ENGLISH responses)

Uploaded 3/12/2020, approx. 12 minute read

Summary

In this transcript, Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the misconceptions surrounding gender, sex, and sexual orientation. He argues that gender roles are not determined by sexual equipment and that sexual attraction is socially determined rather than biologically determined. Vaknin also explains that fetishism is the natural state of sexuality and that the idealized sexuality of being attracted to the totality of a person is rare. He suggests that the real abnormality is people who do not have fetishes and that pedophiles have a holistic, total view of sexuality.

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I think it’s very useful to realize that our perception that sex has to do with gender is a very common mistake.

When we are born, we have an assigned sex. We are born with a penis, so we are males. With a vagina, we are females. In very rare cases, we have both.

But generally speaking, we have an assigned sex.

Then we are brainwashed into believing that certain sex means certain types of behavior. Certain inhibitions, certain things you should do and things you should not do.

This is society’s contribution.

And this is when gender comes in.

Gender is a set of behaviors, mores, conventions, norms that are associated with specific genital equipment.

And that’s where we got confused. We thought, we still think, that the genital equipment determines the functioning and the behavior.

But actually there’s absolutely no connection between the genital equipment and the functioning and the behavior.

We have societies, for example northern Albania, where women function as men. They carry the male functions. They wear trousers. They sit in coffee houses and smoke. They manage the family’s property. They assign work to the men who, at home I mean. So the men wash the dishes and clean the floors and do the laundry and so on and so forth.

So of course, gender roles have nothing to do with sexual equipment.

If this is the case, then our attraction to the opposite sex probably is socially determined. Not necessarily biologically determined.

We have this tendency to believe that we are attracted to the opposite sex because that’s biology, that’s nature.

I mean, have a look. In older species, there’s the eukaryotic species, the high species. You have female and male, and here they mate, no?

So if we mate, it means it’s predestined and determined by nature.

However, the truth is that absolutely anything can be a sexual object. Absolutely anything can be an object of desire. And absolutely anything can create sexual arousal and excitation.

When I say anything, I mean anything. A roll of toilet paper, a ski outfit, a latex glove, the heel of a woman’s shoe, the woman’s foot, her nose.

I mean, absolutely everything can and does create sexual arousal and excitation.

So what is sexual arousal determined by?

We have the sociobiological school, which had become dominant in the last 50 years, and it teaches us that evolution determines why we are attracted sexually.

Evolution wants us to carry our genes forward.

So we have a whole complex set of mechanisms for determining the appropriate partner with whom we can propagate the genes.

Of course, it’s complete nonsense. It’s complete nonsense because we see that behaviors that have nothing to do with gene propagation, sexual behavior, nothing to do with gene propagation are extremely widespread.

That would include, as I mentioned, BDSM, 15% of population, pedophile fantasies, 20% of population.

I mean, the numbers are staggering. We are not talking about 3% or half percent or whatever. They are staggering numbers.

And I think the reason sociobiology had become so popular is a Victorian reason, because we also tend to believe that the best arrangement for carrying genes forward and for sexual attraction is monogamy, which, of course, is not.

Monogamy is to start with a historical aberration, a very short period, and it doesn’t work, of course. It doesn’t work.

Adultery today is more common than marriage. Marriage rates today have fallen beyond adultery rates. People go outside the marriage much more often than they get married.

And if we expand monogamy to include committed relationship, the picture is much worse, because cheating in committed relationships, which are not marriage, are twice to three times higher than cheating in marriage.

So we confuse, simply, social arrangements, like marriage, one-on-one, monogamy, sexual exclusivity, with gender roles, a boy is a boy, a girl is a girl, with sex, which is equipment, and with sexual orientation, with sexual preference, which is like to do with sexual orientation, and finally and above all, with sexual objects.

Sexual objects can be, and is, and are, anything, literally anything.

The only relevant distinction would be between holistic sexual orientation, and partial or reductionist sexual orientation.

So some people react to the totality. I mean, they are sexually aroused by totality.

So if they are attracted to women, they would be sexually aroused by the totality of the woman, her entire body, her sense of humor, her intelligence, her conversation, her personality, by her totality, so they would be, that would arouse them sexually.

If they are attracted not to a woman, if they are attracted to an animal, they would be reacting to the totality of the animal, the smell of the animal, the shape of the animal, the sound of the animal, so on.

If they are attracted to cars, and believe it or not, there is sexual attraction to cars, then they would react to the totality of the car, etc.

It’s a total orientation, but it does not determine the sexual object. It can be any sexual object.

But whatever the sexual object, the totality will matter.

And you have people who react, who are reductionist.

They don’t react to the totality. They react to an element, component, ingredient, or aspect.

These people are called fetishes.

They can react to any dimension or aspect. They can react to the texture of a fabric. They can react to a specific clothing item, like boots. They can react to a specific body part, like feet.

But it will always be a part of, it will always be reductionist.

So these kind of people, they will not be attracted to the totality of the car, they will be attracted to the tires. They will not be attracted to the totality of the woman, they will be attracted to her feet. They will not be attracted to the totality of a goat. They will be attracted to the goat’s beard. I don’t know what. They will be attracted to something, to an element.

When you are attracted to the totality, the number of sexual objects that you can be attracted to is limited, by definition.

When you are attracted to a reductionist, there is no limit, almost, to what can become a sexual object. Any element, any ingredient, any sub-sub part, any broken part, anything can become a sexual object.

So, in truth, the number of fetishes is far bigger than the number of holistic totalitarian, if you wish, people.

This is the dirty secret of sexuality, that the idealized sexuality is that we are attracted to the totality. I don‘t know if there is such a person alive. People are never attracted or rarely attracted to totality.

The overwhelming vast majority of humanity are fetishes.

Even when you meet a woman, you reduce her to body parts.

No one pays attention to the totality of a woman when he first sees the woman. He immediately scans the breasts, the face, the feet, whatever, turns him on.

Fetishism is the natural state of sexuality, not an aberration, not a deviance, not a perversion, as Victorian sexuality would have us believe, and we are still living in Victorian age. Fetishism is the normal state.

The thing is that, as I said, fetishism is virtually unlimited. So you can have people who are attracted to elements or components or ingredients that are unusual.

It is not their attraction to a specific element that is unusual. It is the element that is unusual.

The fact that they are attracted to something specific is not unusual. This is the rule. That’s the common state.

It’s just that their choice of what to be attracted to is unusual.

But if you read textbooks in sexuality and psychology, they will tell you that being attracted to a specific element is sick, is unusual.

Which is a lie, a simple lie. Any sexologist will tell you it’s a lie.

But it’s a lie we don’t dare to discuss openly. It’s simply a lie.

I have proof also that it’s a lie, if you will.

I told you about the recent study, A Billion Wicked Thoughts.

They analyzed a dataset of internet searches, what people search on the internet for sex, and it covers close to 2 billion people, from every conceivable country, and so on and so forth, and I think the initial dataset was a billion searches.

It’s the biggest study of its kind.

The overwhelming vast majority of people were looking for parts, body parts, clothing parts, parts.

So the typical search is boobs or feet.

No one would search for a beautiful woman who has a great sense of humor and very intelligent, or a gorgeous man who understands the politics of the 20th century.

There’s no such search.

There’s a search, big penis, or boots, whips.

Yes, there are searches for this.

Almost all the searches, we are talking billion, billion plus, almost all the searches were fetishistic in the classic sense. Almost all of them were fetishistic.

They were looking for a trait, or specific trait or behavior, specific part, or specific material. These are the three fetishes, groups of fetishes.

And that’s it. That’s a natural state of humanity.

So when I hear about someone who is turned on by being a horse, or someone who is turned on by wearing a ski mask.

For me, that’s the natural state of sexuality.

I think for a man to be attracted to the totality of a woman requires inordinate effort and does not reflect sexuality at all, but political correctness in society and culture.

It’s not nice to be attracted only to her gorgeous boobs. You should be attracted to her personality. She’s a human being. It’s not nice. It’s politically incorrect.

So, I therefore don’t think that there’s anything special in narcissists dealing with fetishes and so on.

There may be something special in the specific fetishes that narcissists choose, which reflect their, for example, need for objectification, or need for novelty-seeking adventures apropos the ski guy, or need for utter and total surrender, which is when you become a pet. Pets are owned, domesticated, controlled and slaughtered. Yes, pigs are slaughtered. So this is total surrender.

And this, again, is a vacation from life that we discussed. The moment of hiatus, the moment of break, that the narcissist needs very much because he doesn’t have energy. He’s depleted.

Narcissists, by the way, take these vacations without sex. This is called dissociation.

The narcissist dissociation is because of that.

The energy required is so enormous, the narcissist must take breaks from reality for a millisecond, microsecond, second, so this second of dissociation is exactly what you give the narcissist when you discipline him or when you give the narcissist when he becomes a horse.

So this is the moment, this is the vacation from life.

Only you are capable of giving the narcissist 20 minutes and the narcissist gives himself 20 seconds in form of dissociation.

But the fetish per se should be, all the text books should be written exactly opposite, exactly reverse.

The real abnormality, the real aberration is people who don’t have fetishes. That’s very worrying. These people worry me a lot.

Because for example, it’s possible to construe, to claim that pedophiles are people who do not have fetishes.

The pedophile does relate to the totality of the child.

Most pedophiles, 80% of pedophiles are not attracted to children sexually. They are attracted to the company of children. They are attracted to controlling the child. They are attracted to the child’s personality.

When you talk to pedophiles, why they were attracted to a specific child, they will talk about the child in terms of a lover. They would say he had sparkling personality, he had a captivating smile. I couldn’t resist him. He was so cute, he was so wonderful.

Pedophiles actually have a holistic, total view of sexuality. Where sex is not very important, it’s just one element in a totality.

That’s the reason why very few of them actually end up having sex with the children. Very few pedophiles actually have sex. They don’t seek the sex, they seek the child.

So this is an example of pathologized sexuality, a sick sexuality.

I would be very worried by people who are not fetishists.

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Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

In this transcript, Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the misconceptions surrounding gender, sex, and sexual orientation. He argues that gender roles are not determined by sexual equipment and that sexual attraction is socially determined rather than biologically determined. Vaknin also explains that fetishism is the natural state of sexuality and that the idealized sexuality of being attracted to the totality of a person is rare. He suggests that the real abnormality is people who do not have fetishes and that pedophiles have a holistic, total view of sexuality.

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