Sure as there are billions of people on the planet, there are billions of kinks and preferences that turn them on.
Admit it: Even you likely have a kink that is a little outside of the norms of what is generally considered ‘normal’ society. Perhaps you’ve got a bit of a penchant for Paraphilic Infantilism, or have a hankering for some Hobophilia?
Don’t worry, we will explain what both of those fetishes are as we list some of the ‘stranger’ ones out there, but first we are going to dive in and examine what causes us to even have fetishes in the first place.
So, where do fetishes come from?
While there’s certainly no definitive answer to such a question, what can be said is that they tend to be multi-sensory in that they can play off of scent, sight, touch, etc.
Why someone might have a fetish for–let’s say feet, for example–could be based on the sight of them (as in they find feet to be visually sexually attractive) or for something they represent to the person with the fetish (like the taboo of something that is ‘dirty’ or the intimacy of seeing someone’s bare feet).
Other sources of fetishes may come from associations made during youth between sexual arousal and an object, a specific combination of factors or a non-genital body part. For instance, and returning to the foot fetish example, one’s budding sexuality occurring when they are small enough to still be close to adult feet, thus equating the two.
However, that’s very much an educated guess that is related to probably the most commonly-referenced theory on what causes fetishes, and that is Pavlovian conditioning.
The theory in this case goes that when exposed to something inanimate in a way that is related to sexual stimuli, a person may develop a sexual response to the inanimate thing. In the study that posits this idea, straight men were shown pictures of boots before being shown images of naked women. As the process was repeated, the men would become aroused when shown only pictures of boots.
So, how do we go from there to ‘zombie porn?’
When it comes down to exposure at the exact right time, or repeated exposure over the course of one’s sexual awakening, how do we end up with something as bizarre as a penchant for zombie porn?
It could be that the craze for zombie-related entertainment throughout the 2010s occurred during the pubescence of a very large generational cohort of millennials and gen Zers. This would go a long way to explaining the proliferation of pornography featuring the undead–however there’s likely more to it than someone simply seeing a zombie close to the time of their first sexual arousal.
What might a zombie fetish mean?
In popular media, zombies are no longer human, and have no standard for treatment outside of being disposed of or dispatched immediately. However, despite no longer being human, they still bear a human’s corporeal form.
What zombie porn consumer might be getting off on then is the idea of a disposable partner, which one can then read deeper to mean that they may have anxieties around performance–an unfeeling and unthinking zombie, after all, doesn’t care about how good you are in bed.
Keep in mind that that’s just a rudimentary demographic/psychiatric read on zombie porn and what people might see in it. As for other outside-of-the-norm fetishes, here is a list of some that you can do you own psych 101 read on:
- Macrophilia: Aroused by giant things, as in giants. Giant people or beings having sex with other giant things or even normal-sized people.
- Hobophilia: A sexual desire for homeless people, or having sex in a way one would perceive homeless people doing.
- Paraphilic Infantilism: This fetish is around pretending to be a baby and doing baby things like being helpless without an adult, and of course, wearing a diaper.
- Axillism: An arousal focused on people’s armpits.
