[–] chirogonemd 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
I had a buddy who not-so-subtly let on that he was into the dirty panties thing, and at my reaction he started trying to explain the fetish. It was rational enough. He said that it has to do with our archetypal understanding/experience of woman, and the idealized picture that creates for us. The fetish is really the denigration of that ideal. This is a girl who is supposed to be perfect, clean, chaste, etc. etc. and the underwear represents something dirty - both symbolically dirty and literally physically dirty. They are like a "secret" she has and isn't supposed to tell the world, but you are getting access to this side of her, like this dirty facet of her otherwise perfect appearance. The arousal comes from some fucked up synthesis of the disgust and the fact she is giving you privileged access to it. The fetish arises due to the movement away from the strictly symbolic to the object relationship with the real dirty article.
It made me think about how I've idealized women I've had crushes on in the past, particularly when I was young. It's true that we do tend to paste all of these imaginative ideals on women. Part of me can understand how the contrast of the vile with the perfect could be a type of novelty that could be sexualized.
But that's where I see the problem, and why I think it is such an abnormal sexual arc. I think for a fantasy like this to really ferment, that is, to really start to build and gain momentum, only happens in a hyper-pornographic world. For the longest time, we lacked the structures in society for these types of fetishized sexual fantasies to really grow. But now, if the tumor develops, there is a steady stream of private/discrete environments that literally nurture these sexual responses. It's not good.
To say one positive thing about these people: it's very unlikely that these things begin as fucked up as this. Like I said, it's a development, and it's a problem within our culture that we have no boundaries that are preventing this kind of thing from happening. But where there is a will, there is an opportunity to make money. Women can literally make money selling their used underwear to these guys. Where the rest of us regular people have to throw them away, they can get their money back and then some. There are just so many different factors to include trying to culturally critique the situation that it makes one wonder what there is to be done about it.
But long story short, he seemed to think that this process is what underlies a lot of the fetishes like scat. Some unconscious desire to partake in the defiling of a woman's perfection. Again, it seems perfectly rational. But these are things I think were better relegated in the unconscious, and it's a dangerous thing when we are letting it all out and nurturing it.