I'm not an advice columnist. This is probably a good thing. When I was in high school and college, friends frequently asked me for relationship advice and I like to think I was okay at giving it, but now that I realize how fucked up my own relationships were then, I'm not actually that sure.
Regardless of my advice columnist status, and the fact that no one actually asked my opinion, I'm really, really weirded out and upset by today's Dear Prudence column about a teenage boy with a latex glove fetish. The letter is written by the kid's mom, and she asks "Should I try to stop him [from looking at glove porn, wearing gloves, etc.], or should I just chalk it up to a personality quirk and worry no longer?"
Unsurprisingly, Prudie starts tossing around words like "deviant" and talks to a shrink, who "says your son needs a complete psychological workup." Seriously? Because he likes gloves? I would say on a kinky scale of 1 to fucking scary, rubber and latex gloves are, like, a 0.5. And, of course, even kinks that fall at my personal fucking scary end of the scale are still okay.
Dan Savage, who is in my opinion a much sounder source for sex advice, posted his response, and it's (also unsurprisingly) not crazy and alarmist like Prudie's. I certainly don't agree with Dan on everything (certainly not with his stance on pit bulls), but I agree with him here.
I'd like to add that I'm pretty sure most 13-year-olds, regardless of whether or not they're kinky, feel worry about whether the people they're interested in dating will like them. So, in fact, do most people older than 13. I feel like sending your kid for a full psychological workup (though I have nothing against psychological professionals in general) is not going to accomplish much except reinforcing the message that there is something wrong with them.
I really wonder if this had been another issue, not a fetish but something else that made a kid concerned about their possibly limited dating pool, would the advice have been the same? If my mom had written this letter when I was 13 and said "My daughter is worried that her interest in vampire movies is 'too weird' and is scaring away potential boyfriends," (and a dude totally shot me down when I was 13 because of this) would a psychiatrist have been called in? Well, maybe. Because vampires are scary and evil and I was 13 around the time of the Vampire Clan murders, but that's beside the point. What if it were an interest in "Star Trek"? Or video games? I feel like those would have a very different answer. But because it's a fetish, it must be dangerous and scary and a sign of a bigger problem. That is such crap.
So you know what? I eventually found and started dating someone who liked me despite my inability to talk about anything other than vampire movies and The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was 13. And all you people out there who are worried about finding someone--there are people out there who will like you and find you attractive and sexy and interesting despite (or better yet, because of) your interest in "Star Trek" or your obsession with Joan Crawford movies or even your weird freakin' fetishes, let alone your relatively harmless ones.
Moved.
1 year ago
Actually, Prudence is not off the mark completely. What she's addressing has less to do with "EW, THAT'S GROSS" and the fact that it's taking over the kid's life. Sorry, but if there's piles of plastic gloves in his room and he's not bothering to hide them, that sounds like an addiction to me. And he isn't that shamed about it if he's having his own mother indulge his kink, even after she found the porn. (She buys the gloves) He's including his mother in the fetish, and that's just bizarre.
ReplyDeleteIf all you can do is define yourself by a fetish or interest, I think there's a problem. That includes being so obsessed with Star Trek, that you refuse to leave the house and won't connect with any one who isn't into your same interests.
I don't think I would "chalk it up" to just a kink, not if he's this obsessed with it at 13, and has been this intense about gloves since he was little. He's also well aware how bizarre this fetish is (a quick Google taught him that) so it's very likely this obsession will lead to depression.
If I were that mother, I would find an open minded shrink, who wouldn't make my kid feel like a monster for his kink. But he needs to learn to balance his kink with broader interests.
You also need to have him open enough to experience other sexual kinks. If the only thing that gets him off is plastic gloves, no exception, then yes, there is a strong possibility of being alone for a long time. But if he's a giving lover, finds an open minded girl (or boy!) and he says, "You know what gives me the *best* orgasms?" Then he'll be fine.
That's my two cents.
(Also note: The fact that he doesn't hide it is a cry for help. 13 year olds in particular are secretive as hell with their parents, particularly when it comes to sex and what turns them on. He's leaving the evidence of his obsession AND he's verbalizing his fears. The kid wants help in a stronger form than, "God just made you different." It's sort of like how kids who want to blow up the school tell at least one person. They want help.)
ReplyDelete@mourningdove - um. I disagree with a lot of that.
ReplyDeletePeople with weird kinks don't tend to become depressed and obsessive because their kinks are weird, but rather because there aren't generally any channels that allow for healthy expression of those kinks - certainly not for 13-year-olds. Of course your desires, no matter how tame, will get weirder and less healthy if society keeps telling you it's weird and unhealthy for you to have them in the first place.
Certainly it's possible to become obsessed with kinks to an unhealthy extent - but I would bet anything that most people's tolerance for kink taking up time/effort is much lower for other, "normal" things. If an adolescent likes astronomy and spends nights on the roof with a telescope and misses out on sleep, does he need psychiatric help? If a teenager takes up boxing and has bruises sometimes, is he a weirdo?
And yes, of course he feels like he needs help! Probably in the form of THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU.
-Tails
@mourningdove - It's possible I'm just coloring my take on this with my own experiences, but I was really prone to being obsessed with things when I was that age. When I say I had an inability to talk about anything outside of my two main interests, that's almost literally true. I seriously wish I still had pictures of my bedroom from then, with the giant shrine to all things Rocky Horror. I can still recite parts of the dialogue from that movie from memory.
ReplyDeleteDo I think this kid maybe needs to stop telling his mom about his fetish? Yes. Do I think piles of gloves around his room are excessive? Yes. But I also think 13-year-olds get really, passionately interested in stuff and he might calm down in a few years. I also think using words like "deviant" (though yes, I know that rubber gloves and latex do, in fact, deviate from sexual norms) is silly and alarmist and I'm really offended by the part about fetishes masking other emotional problems.
As I said, if I'm going to get the boy a shrink, it better damn well be a shrink who says, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU. Plenty of people and teens go to therepy for things much less.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, if my kid is into astrononmy to the point where it's effecting his sleep cycle and school, I would intervene. That's sort of the way I was raised, though, for better or worse. If I went into a path of teenager obsession with things, it was nurtured, encouraged, and even expanded upon! But there was always a note of, "Hey, but don't limit yourself to just this." I'm still into the things I was "obsessed" with as a 13 year old and I'm even going to school for it. But my interests varied and I could connect with lots of different people and talk about a lot of different things.
And if it's okay to tell my kid to not limit themselves to different masterbation techniques, why can't I encourage my kid to try wackin' it without the rubber gloves some time?
You are right about the word deviant and it being ridiculously alarmist. That's the world of academia for you. I'm writing a paper on 19th century literature, where they talk about homosexuality as "deviant sexuality" and there's a lot of critics saying, "Forgive them, they knew not what they say." I'm now used to ghosting over the word. She is being goofy on that point, especially when she includes shoe-fetish with deviant sexuality. R-really?
(sorry if this post doesn't make much sense. out the door for an interview so I had to write it quick!)