Preferences Are Fine. Fetishizing People Is Not.

I’ve seen it mentioned recently in a couple of tweets that “People are not a fetish”. I agree with the sentiment behind that statement, although I would refine it to read that “People should not be a fetish.” Because the reality is that people’s racial and ethnic backgrounds are, unfortunately, fetishes for some.

Since I’m a big nerd, though, let’s go to the dictionary (Thanks Merriam-Webster!):

fetish

noun  fe·tish 

1a : an object (such as a small stone carving of an animal) believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner; broadly : a material object regarded with superstitious or extravagant trust or reverence

b : an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion : prepossession

c : an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression

2: fixation 

3: a rite or cult of fetish worshippers

Speaking as a black male, there are multiple subcultures where black men (and our skin color) are the focus of somewhat irrational reverence or prepossession; where our bodily parts are viewed as an object of fixation and the presence of certain parts are necessary for the sexual gratification of some individuals/couples.

Is that correct or nice? No. No one should be reduced to being viewed as a collection of discrete parts. And yet it happens a lot; too often in fact.

(Porn is guilty of doing this. All the damn time. In all kinds of different fucking ways, by the way).

Let’s move on to another word, though, that might make more sense in the context of some of the things we see bandied about online:

partialism

noun  par·tial·ism

concentration of libidinal interest on one part of the body (as breasts or buttocks)

Here’s where we can insert all of the references and the obsession with big black cocks/big black dicks/black bulls. Or conversely, where the obsession with the size of breasts or buttocks or even bellies falls.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is when partialism gives way to an unhealthly and singular focus on only that one thing to the detriment of seeing the whole person. That is when preference gives way to fetishization and it becomes detrimental to being a healthy perspective on things.

Where I see it at its most noxious is usually when those who tend to be obsessed with black bodies (and black dicks in particular) seem to care only about the dick and what it can do to make them or their wife/girlfriend/partner feel good and seem to shit on the humanity of black men at all other turns. Where we become simply good enough for pleasure, but you know, our existence outside of that paradigm isn’t important to you.

That’s when you go from a preference to a problem. That’s when people simply become a fetish. And it’s toxic and vile and all of those awful dehumanizing things.