question: what's the difference between attraction and fetishism? and why is fetishism considered rude in some situations but not others? (think like the embracing of foot fetishes)
comment: I'll be upfront about this. Having a fetish is not considered 'normal' by society and lots of people have a hard time comprehending that this sort of thing even exists let alone is far more common place than they could imagine. A fetish is being attracted to a thing or an action to such a degree that you can't be turned out without it. People with a fetish may have difficulty differentiating between being attracted to someone because of their appearance, or personality, etc or being attracted to them because they happen to be wearing something or performing an act that you fetishize. This can lead to them being in relationships for the wrong reasons, and being taken advantage of. Some people with fetishes have difficulty in relationships because of it. They can't be aroused without their fetish and their partner has to be aware of this and a willing participant and so the sex life can be difficult. Some people are honestly creeped out by fetishes and discovering that a potential or existing partner is into this sort of thing can unfortunately result in disgust and generally bad reactions towards it. The key thing of course is communication, discussing this sort of thing openly with a partner is healthy but since many people are closeted with regards to their fetish because of the taboo they can have a really hard time with this. Having a bad reaction to it can lead them to be even more closeted instead of embracing this part of themselves and exploring it in a healthy way.
passages: Human fetishism has been compared to Pavlovian conditioning of sexual response in other animals. Sexual attraction to certain cues can be artificially induced in rats. Both male and female rats will develop a sexual preference for neutrally or even noxiously scented partners if those scents are paired with their early sexual experiences. Injecting morphine or oxytocin into a male rat during its first exposure to scented females has the same effect. Rats will also develop sexual preferences for the location of their early sexual experiences, and can be conditioned to show increased arousal in the presence of objects such as a plastic toy fish. One experiment found that rats which are made to wear a Velcro tethering jacket during their formative sexual experiences exhibit severe deficits in sexual performance when not wearing the jacket. Similar sexual conditioning has been demonstrated in gouramis, marmosets and Japanese quails.
   Under the DSM-5, fetishism is sexual arousal from nonliving objects or specific nongenital body parts, excluding clothes used for cross-dressing (as that falls under transvestic disorder) and sex toys that are designed for genital stimulation. In order to be diagnosed as "fetishistic disorder", the arousal must persist for at least six months and cause significant psychosocial distress or impairment in important areas of their life. In the DSM-IV, sexual interest in body parts was distinguished from fetishism under the name partialism (diagnosed as Paraphilia NOS), but it was merged with fetishistic disorder for the DSM-5.
   The ICD-10 defines fetishism as a reliance on non-living objects for sexual arousal and satisfaction. It is only considered a disorder when fetishistic activities are the foremost source of sexual satisfaction, and become so compelling or unacceptable as to cause distress or interfere with normal sexual intercourse. The ICD's research guidelines require that the preference persists for at least six months, and is markedly distressing or acted on.
   The sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld followed another line of thought when he proposed his theory of "partial attractiveness" in 1920. According to his argument, sexual attractiveness never originates in a person as a whole but always is the product of the interaction of individual features. He stated that nearly everyone had special interests and thus suffered from a healthy kind of fetishism, while only detaching and overvaluing of a single feature resulted in pathological fetishism. Today, Hirschfeld's theory is often mentioned in the context of gender role specific behavior: females present sexual stimuli by highlighting body parts, clothes or accessories; males react to them.
   The literature includes single-case studies of exceedingly rare and idiosyncratic paraphilias. These include an adolescent male who had a strong fetishistic interest in the exhaust pipes of cars, a young man with a similar interest in a specific type of car, and a man who had a paraphilic interest in sneezing (both his own and the sneezing of others).
  
  Section::::Diagnosis.:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
  
  Section::::Diagnosis.:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.:DSM-I and DSM-II.
   While medical definitions restrict the term "sexual fetishism" to objects or body parts, "fetish" can, in common discourse, also refer to sexual interest in specific activities.
  
  Section::::Definitions.
  
  In common parlance, the word "fetish" is used to refer to any sexually arousing stimuli, not all of which meet the medical criteria for fetishism. This broader usage of "fetish" covers parts or features of the body (including obesity and body modifications), objects, situations and activities (such as smoking or BDSM). Paraphilias such as urophilia, necrophilia and coprophilia have been described as fetishes.
   Fetishism is a disorder that is characterized by a sexual fixation, fantasies or behaviors toward an inanimate object, these objects frequently are articles of clothing. It is only through this object which the individual can achieve sexual gratification. It is not rare that an individual will rub or smell the object. This disorder is more common in males and it is not understood why. 
  
  Transvestic fetishism also commonly known as transvestism.
  
  Section::::Paraphilias.:Sexual sadism and sexual masochism.
   A 2007 study counted members of Internet discussion groups with the word "fetish" in their name. Of the groups about body parts or features, 47% belonged to groups about feet (podophilia), 9% about body fluids (including urophilia, scatophilia, lactaphilia, menophilia, mucophilia), 9% about body size, 7% about hair (hair fetish), and 5% about muscles (muscle worship). Less popular groups focused on navels (navel fetishism), legs, body hair, mouth, and nails, among other things. Of the groups about clothing, 33% belonged to groups about clothes worn on the legs or buttocks (such as stockings or skirts), 32% about footwear (shoe fetishism), 12% about underwear (underwear fetishism), and 9% about whole-body wear such as jackets. Less popular object groups focused on headwear, stethoscopes, wristwear, and diapers (diaper fetishism).
   Erotic stimuli may originate from a source unrelated to the object of subsequent sexual interest. For example, many people may find nudity, erotica or pornography sexually arousing. This may generate a general sexual interest that is satisfied by sexual activity. When sexual arousal is achieved by or dependent on the use of objects, it is referred to as sexual fetishism, or in some instances a paraphilia.
   Some explanations invoke classical conditioning. In several experiments, men have been conditioned to show arousal to stimuli like boots, geometric shapes or penny jars by pairing these cues with conventional erotica. According to John Bancroft, conditioning alone cannot explain fetishism, because it does not result in fetishism for most people. He suggests that conditioning combines with some other factor, such as an abnormality in the sexual learning process.
   Many people exhibit high levels of sexual fetishism and are sexually stimulated by other stimuli not normally associated with sexual arousal. The degree to which such fetishism exists or has existed in different cultures is controversial.
  
  Pheromones have been determined to play a role in sexual attraction between people. They influence gonadal hormone secretion, for example, follicle maturation in the ovaries in females and testosterone and sperm production in males.
  
  Section::::High anxiety.
   Other known types of fetishes that have not been reported by study is included in the following.
   Various explanations have been put forth for the rarity of female fetishists. Most fetishes are visual in nature, and males are thought to be more sexually sensitive to visual stimuli. Roy Baumeister suggests that male sexuality is unchangeable, except for a brief period in childhood during which fetishism could become established, while female sexuality is fluid throughout life.
  
  Section::::Diagnosis.
   Sexual fetishism
  
  Sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part. The object of interest is called the fetish; the person who has "a fetish" for that object is a fetishist. A sexual fetish may be regarded as a non-pathological aid to sexual excitement, or as a mental disorder if it causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life. Sexual arousal from a particular body part can be further classified as partialism.
   The eighteenth-century intellectuals who articulated the theory of fetishism encountered this notion in descriptions of "Guinea" contained in such popular voyage collections as Ramusio's "Viaggio e Navigazioni" (1550), de Bry's "India Orientalis" (1597), Purchas's "Hakluytus Posthumus" (1625), Churchill's "Collection of Voyages and Travels" (1732), Astley's "A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels" (1746), and Prevost's "Histoire generale des voyages" (1748).
   According to Pietz, the post-colonial concept of "fetish" emerged from the encounter between Europeans and Africans in a very specific historical context and in response to African material culture.
  
  He begins his polemic with an introduction to the complex history of the word:
   The theory of fetishism was consecrated at the end of the eighteenth century by G.W.F. Hegel in "Lectures on the Philosophy of History". According to Hegel, Africans were incapable of abstract thought, their ideas and actions were governed by impulse, and therefore a fetish object could be anything that then was arbitrarily imbued with imaginary powers.
   Originally, most medical sources defined fetishism as a sexual interest in non-living objects, body parts or secretions. The publication of the DSM-III in 1980 changed that by excluding arousal from body parts in its diagnostic criteria for fetishism. In 1987, a revised edition of the DSM-III (DSM-III-R) introduced a new diagnosis for body part arousal, called "partialism". The DSM-IV retained this distinction. Martin Kafka argued that partialism should be merged into fetishism because of overlap between the two conditions, and the DSM-5 subsequently did so in 2013. The ICD-10 definition is still limited to non-living objects.
  
  Section::::Types.
   The ReviseF65 project has campaigned for the ICD diagnosis to be abolished completely to avoid stigmatizing fetishists. Sexologist Odd Reiersøl argues that distress associated with fetishism is often caused by shame, and that being subject to diagnosis only exacerbates that. He suggests that, in cases where the individual fails to control harmful behavior, they instead be diagnosed with a personality or impulse control disorder.
  
  Section::::Treatment.
   The prevalence of fetishism is not known with certainty. The majority of fetishists are male. In a 2011 study, 30% of men reported fetishistic fantasies, and 24.5% had engaged in fetishistic acts. Of those reporting fantasies, 45% said the fetish was intensely sexually arousing. In a 2014 study, 26.3% of women and 27.8% of men acknowledged any fantasies about "having sex with a fetish or non-sexual object". A content analysis of the sample's favorite fantasies found that 14% of the male fantasies involved fetishism (including feet, nonsexual objects, and specific clothing), and 4.7% focused on a specific body part other than feet. None of the women's favorite fantasies had fetishistic themes. Another study found that 28% of men and 11% of women reported fetishistic arousal (including feet, fabrics, and objects "like shoes, gloves, or plush toys"). 18% of men in a 1980 study reported fetishistic fantasies.
   Fetishism to the extent that it becomes a disorder appears to be rare, with less than 1% of general psychiatric patients presenting fetishism as their primary problem. It is also uncommon in forensic populations.
  
  Section::::History.
   bears a relationship similar to that which Marx supposed that "political economy" bore to capitalism as its "religion", but not for the reasons advanced by Bosman, the Enlightenment thinkers, and Hegel. The irrationally "animate" character of the ritual system's symbolic apparatus, including "minkisi", divination devices, and witch-testing ordeals, obliquely expressed real relations of power among the participants in ritual. "Fetishism" is about relations among people, rather than the objects that mediate and disguise those relations.
   Fetishism can take multiple forms and has branched off to incorporate different races. English naturalist and geologist, Charles Darwin, can offer some observations in regards to why some people might find other races more attractive than their own. Attraction can be viewed as a mechanism for choosing a healthy mate. People's minds have evolved to recognize aspects of other peoples' biology that makes them an appropriate or good mate. This area of theory is called optimal outbreeding hypothesis.
  
  Section::::Examples.
  
  Section::::Examples.:White women.
  
  Section::::Examples.:White women.:Fetishism of white women in China.
   Cognitive behavioral therapy is one popular approach. Cognitive behavioral therapists teach clients to identify and avoid antecedents to fetishistic behavior, and substitute non-fetishistic fantasies for ones involving the fetish. Aversion therapy and covert conditioning can reduce fetishistic arousal in the short term, but requires repetition to sustain the effect. Multiple case studies have also reported treating fetishistic behavior with psychodynamic approaches.
   Section::::Practice.
  
  The use of the concept in the study of religion derives from studies of traditional West African religious beliefs, as well as from Voodoo, which in turn derives from those beliefs.
  
  Fetishes were commonly used in Native American religion and practices. The bear represented the shaman, the buffalo was the provider, the mountain lion was the warrior, and the wolf was the pathfinder.
  
  Section::::"Minkisi".
  