Sexual fetishes are far more common than most people assume. In one large survey of over 1,000 adults in Belgium, nearly 47% had engaged in at least one BDSM-related act, and about 22% reported fantasizing about it. These numbers only capture one category of kink. When you broaden the definition to include any strong sexual interest in a specific object, body part, or scenario, the proportion of people with at least one fetishistic interest climbs higher still.
The gap between how common fetishes actually are and how common people think they are is largely a product of stigma. Most people don’t volunteer this information in casual conversation, which creates the impression that unusual sexual interests are rare. They aren’t.
What Counts as a Fetish
In everyday language, “fetish” gets used loosely to describe any strong sexual preference. Clinically, the term refers to intense, recurring sexual arousal tied to a specific nonliving object (like leather or latex), a body part not typically considered sexual (like feet), or a particular scenario (like dominance and submission). The key distinction is that the interest is persistent and plays a central role in a person’s sexual arousal, not just something they find mildly appealing.
The American Psychiatric Association draws a clear line between having an atypical sexual interest and having a disorder. Most people with unusual sexual interests do not have a mental health condition. A fetish only qualifies as a “paraphilic disorder” if it causes genuine personal distress (not just embarrassment from social judgment) or if it involves nonconsenting people or those unable to consent. This distinction matters: it means that having a fetish, even an uncommon one, is not inherently a problem.
Gender Differences in Fetishistic Interest
Research consistently finds that men and women differ in which types of atypical sexual interests they report, though the overall rates of having fetishistic interests are surprisingly similar. A 2022-2023 study of 224 adults found no significant gender difference in fetishistic interest itself. Where the genders diverged was in the type of interest: men reported higher levels of interest in sadistic and urine-related scenarios, while women reported significantly more interest in masochistic roles.
This pattern holds across multiple studies. Men tend to report a wider variety of specific fetish objects and scenarios, while women more often report interests tied to power dynamics and sensation. But the basic capacity to develop a fetish appears roughly equal across genders.
Why Fetishes Develop
No single explanation accounts for all fetishes, but researchers have identified several plausible mechanisms that likely work together.
The most well-supported theory is classical conditioning. A fetish can develop when a neutral object or scenario gets repeatedly paired with sexual arousal during a formative period. In controlled experiments, researchers showed men sexually explicit images alongside nonsexual stimuli like women’s boots or colored geometric shapes. Some men eventually developed arousal responses to the boots or shapes alone, even without the explicit images. This suggests the brain can learn to associate almost anything with sexual reward if the timing is right.
A related idea, the early imprinting model, proposes that childhood and adolescent experiences shape adult sexual interests. This doesn’t require anything traumatic. A child who experiences a confusing but exciting emotional response in the presence of a particular material, scenario, or body part may carry that association into adulthood. The trauma model is a more specific version of this idea, suggesting that some fetishes originate from emotionally or physically distressing experiences, or from growing up in environments where sexuality was heavily restricted, creating a kind of psychological pressure that channels arousal in unexpected directions.
One of the more elegant explanations applies specifically to foot fetishes, the most commonly reported fetish worldwide. In the brain, sensory information from different body parts is processed in adjacent regions mapped along a strip of tissue. The area that processes sensation from the feet sits right next to the area that processes genital sensation. The “crossed signals” theory proposes that in some people, neurons in these neighboring zones overlap slightly, so stimulation of or attention to feet activates some of the same neural pathways involved in sexual arousal. It’s essentially a quirk of brain architecture.
Shifting Trends and Growing Openness
Fetish preferences aren’t static, either culturally or individually. Survey data collected over multiple years shows that specific kinks rise and fall in popularity, sometimes influenced by media and pop culture. Blindfold play, for instance, ranked in the top five kinks in a 2023 survey but had dropped near the bottom of the top ten by 2025. Nipple play jumped from 41% of respondents in 2023 to 55% in 2025. Group sex interest rose from 40% to 48% over the same period. Even niche interests like stretching play nearly doubled, going from 6% to 10%.
These shifts reflect both genuine changes in what people enjoy and a growing willingness to report it. Surveys from recent years consistently find that fewer people are hiding their kinks and fetishes from partners compared to earlier cohorts. The normalization of online communities, dating apps with kink-friendly filters, and mainstream media that treats fetishes as ordinary rather than scandalous has made disclosure feel less risky.
When a Fetish Becomes a Concern
For the vast majority of people, a fetish is simply part of their sexual landscape. It adds variety, intensity, or a sense of identity to their intimate lives. It becomes worth examining only under specific circumstances: when it causes you real emotional suffering that goes beyond worrying what others might think, when it’s the only way you can experience arousal and that limitation distresses you, or when it involves people who haven’t consented.
Outside of those situations, having a fetish places you squarely in the normal range of human sexual variation. The research is clear on this point. Atypical does not mean abnormal, and the sheer prevalence of these interests across large population samples confirms that “atypical” is, statistically speaking, quite typical.