Is Your Sexual Fantasy Normal? Your Biological Fetish Explained

Sex fetishes might be more normal than most people think — especially the ones that concern feet and toes. There’s a biological reason for this, too.

Turns out, thousands of people were interested in knowing if sexual fantasies were typical. A new YouTube video posted by AsapSCIENCE Thursday garnered more than 500,000 views and became the No. 12 trending clip after it was posted for a day.

Aside from the content of the video, the clip does a good job at engaging the viewer with this opening line:

“From feet and urine to bondage and other inanimate objects like leather people have all interesting sexual desires and fetishes. But is being aroused by non-living objects or non-genital body parts normal?” the narrator asks.

“Within the brain, what you find sexy is a combination of cognitive, emotional and physical processes. Of course, the private aspect of sexual behavior has made studying fetishes challenging,” the anonymous person says.

As stated earlier, the most common atypical fantasies most popular group by far are feet and toes. This is because feet, toes and genitals are next to each other in the part of the brain that is dedicated to processing sensory functions.

“Feet toes and genitals are all physically right beside each other in the brain,” the video explains. “One study was able to highlight the link between sexual desires and brain regions with a man who experienced epileptic seizures as well as a fetish for safety pins.”

When part of his brain was removed, the seizures stopped and his attraction to safety pins also dissipated.

In a 2015 study, half of the eight “weird” fantasies listed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) were common among people who answered questions about their sexual desires.

“Overall, nearly half (45.6 percent) of the sample subjects were interested in at least one type of sexual behavior that is considered anomalous, whereas one third (33 percent) had experienced the behavior at least once,” Professor Christian Joyal, one of the study's authors, explained in a press release.

“These facts suggest that we need to know what normal sexual practices are before we label a legal sexual interest as anomalous,” he said. “Some paraphilic interests are more common than people might think, not only in terms of fantasies but also in terms of desire and behavior.”

Overall, men were more likely to have atypical fantasies, but women also have these desires.

“In general, it is true that men are more interested in paraphilic behaviors than women,” Joyal said. “However, this doesn't mean that women don't have these interests at all. In fact, women who report an interest in sexual submission have more varied sexual interests and report greater satisfaction with their sex lives.” He added: “Sexual submission is therefore not an abnormal interest.”