The Nascence Of My Fetishes

[lupestripe]

Many psychologists believe that kinks, fetishes and other psychological deviations from "the norm" (and please don't pick apart that term, I use it merely for reference) are fostered in childhood, particularly through childhood experiences. Thinking back, I have realised that a couple of my kinks were a part of my identity from a very early age.

Furry - Age 10 - Watching The Animals Of Farthing Wood, I remember feeling empathy for and wanting to be Fox. I also remember seeing fursuiters about (on very rare occasions) and wishing that I could get a costume of my very own.
BDSM - Age 9 - The police visited our primary school to talk about crime and self-defence techniques. They got two volunteers from the audience and put them in handcuffs. I remember feeling so jealous of them and cursing my shyness for not volunteering.
Pup Play/Rubber - Age 7 - Through The Dragon's Eye was a children's TV show involving a dragon in a rubber-clad suit. Again, I was obsessed with this. The same was true of Woof! - the kid who turned into a dog for no discernable reason. I wanted to be him!!
WAM - Age 7 - I always wanted to go on Fun House with Pat Sharpe. I was never interested in the Fun House itself, or that go-karting thing, but the gunge games. This became somewhat obsessional at an early age.

There are probably other cases if I think back hard enough but these came to me recently. For me, certainly, the way I am was definitely something borne from my early childhood. So I blame my parents :P

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

What is WAM?

-and-

You have spoken the name of the Mullet King! Pay hommage!

[diegowolffox.livejournal.com]

Hehe nice hair Lol =p

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

WAM - Wet And Messy.

Sometimes I forget just how good his mullet was.

[sil-wolfdragon.livejournal.com]

Did i ever mention i have all the episodes of through the dragons eye?

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

No you didn't. Is there any chance you could burn them on to a CD for me? Pweeze *looks up at you longingly*

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

'Woof!' had the same effect on me :)

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

Woof was amazing! It was one of those programmes that ignited something in me. That and The Animals Of Farthing Wood were two things that lit my furry side :)

[alexf0x.livejournal.com]

Furry for me was age 5 or 6 and I had Disney’s Robin hood to blame for that. I'll blame AOFW along with a few other thing a little bit too.

Still next month marks ten years of being in the fandom for me, still can't believe that I've been here so long, let alone think about how long it's been since some of these early influences.

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, Disney's Robin Hood - how could I forget that? Same for me too but I can't remember how old I was when I saw it. I must admit that The Animals Of Farthing Wood had a far greater impact on me.

I have only been here three years but I am heading towards thirty so I can delve back a bit in time too.

[rustyfox.livejournal.com]

Surely they're only kinks if they sexually excite you... heaps of kids liked gungy stuff.

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

True but at the age of seven, you don't really see the world in those terms. You are right, a lot of kids did like gungy stuff but with me at the time, it grew upon the obsessional.

[doco.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's interesting... come to think of it, I've had similar fantasies in my childhood. I vividly remember that one episode where I ended up constructing a scenario where I would get lost in a plane crash at age 21 and mutate into some horrible proto-werewolf creature as a result. You could say I was only off by a few years (given that I pretty much discovered furry fandom at age 15-16). I also remember turning a "wish ring" on a fountain and wishing for it, heh. :P

I also recall a horribly, horribly bad made-for-television film in which people were stranded on an island and taken down one by one by a mad scientist who turned them into fish-like bloated creatures with huge bellies... I can't recall for the sake of my life how that film was called, although I believe if I saw it now, 20 years later, I'd probably get nauseous from its cornyness. :P

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Seeing cartoon characters gain weight and/or inflate had a pretty profound effect on me :)

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

Interesting indeed - I never went as far as constructing my own scenarios - I tended to write more about animal welfare at the time. Perhaps I should have done. But then I did enter the wholes sexual/kink game rather late.

[snowtiger-uk.livejournal.com]

A lot of things had some imact on my kinks, Tom and Jerry, I always wanted to be Tom. The jungle book, I loved sheerkahn the Tiger,? (late 60`s early 70`s )?? I loved Woof, that was awsome. I saw a Lion on an early T.V, I wanted to be that Lion, as a school child I got forced into a small part of acting, a girl was dressed up as a cat, I wanted to be that cat too. I remember covering myself up in a rubber sheet when I was a nipper. The list is too long :)

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

Rubber sheet? Where did you get that from? Was it just lying around? The closest I ever got to rubber as a kid was a rubber swimming hat we had to wear to protect us all from nits.

I remember seeing girls dressed as cats as a kid too and being jealous. I wanted to be like them too. Shia Khan scared me, but I was a cub scout so The Jungle Book has a long list of difficult memories for me. Tom & Jerry I never really got into strangely. Was quite a pacifist really and didn't like violence, even fake contrived violence.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Quite interesting. :) I recall being turned on by dressing up, masks and the like even when I was still in elementary school, maybe even before that, and I always wanted to be the family dog when we played "family".

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I think I was turned on by that at a similar age too but my mother always dismissed such things as being silly and immature. So I never really got the chance to really do such things as a kid. When we played Inspector Gadget with my friends, I wanted to be the dog. That was great. Never played family but I would want to be the dog too :)

[eldabion.livejournal.com]

Woof! I remember that! That was an awesome series, and somehow, its ok that it was never really properly explained at the end of it all. Its one of those premises that someone drempt up one day and just ran with it.

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I think it ran for something like seven series, it was mental. It was always one of the highlights of children's TV for me and I got very defensive and protective over it. I didn't want to be disturbed when I watched it. I was delighted when the village next to mine was once mentioned on the show :)

[roby-panther.livejournal.com]

WAM definitely originates in childhood for most people. Most kids like getting messy, then some of us just take that to the next level as adults.

Furry probably started as kids for most of us as well, though I don't count it as a kink/fetish for me, it's something a little more complex than that, with the sexual side a small component of the whole.

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I guess you are right about the WAM thing - it depends on the background though. I didn't enjoy any other mess at all, only gunge. It's a strange one with me, as if it was quite specific.

Furry is more complex, that is true. But couldn't the same case be made for other fetishes too?

[enteirah]

I think people read far too far into their history sometimes trying to force a connection, but as of now I've not actually worked out why (one day I might get to the bottom of this as it's a much more intriguing psychological mystery!). If I had a pound for every time I'd heard a fur say 'I used to watch xyz programme when I was little which was clearly signs of me being a furry 10 years before I knew about furries', I'd be a millionaire by now...

Myself, I can go one better. I had a cuddly bear and a cuddly rabbit when I was a baby, clearly showing I've been a furry since I was born! >.>

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I'm not forcing a connection at all, it's reliving memories. Everyone is different psychologically so perhaps what works for you, doesn't necessarily work for other people. I'm saying that those programmes catalysed an interest in anthropomprophics because they did. It's that simple. It was a deeper interest than having a plush when I was a baby.

[loupgaros.livejournal.com]

If we're going by this theory...

Woof! and werewolf stories (I never was conventional :P) made me interested in TF. Woof! was awesome, I watched that religiously. The whole aspect of being TF'd was an idea I loved and I pondered what it might be like to be a shapeshifter.

LOTR was read to me by my dad and I rather shamefully loved the violence... <.< These days, it bores me, but I wanted to be a Worg and nom people. And I cheered on the bad guys. I think that's more to do with the fact I love villians. I remember reading Jungle Book and thinking 'Not enough violence.' So for a school assignment when we drew/wrote a story inspired by a book we'd read, my first ever fanfic was a short drabble about how Mowgli fended off an alligator with a stick. And yes, I drew the illustrations and showed *shock, horror* blood. My teachers were worried. XD I loved my violence and psychological horror very early on.

Furry was surprisingly not a big part. Animals of Farthing Wood, I did watch. I adored Badger and Weasel and the storyline with the red and blue foxes. I wanted to *be* Badger. In a school play I was a grubby street rat, with fake ears and whiskers and a tail. Very minor role but damn, I adored it. I used to love the feel of fur but then again, I couldn't describe how it made me feel at the time. Artwise, I always saw animals as an archetypes (urgh... some strange shamanic thing... Tricky to explain) and people, so I gave up drawing people and switched to animals, full stop.

But still, furry was not a big part. I would probably class myself as a wannabe lycanthrope if anything at the time. To be honest I think that things in my childhood made me more like the darker side of fiction/life/the human psyche than furry. I use furry as a rider for my ideas and wierd machinations really :P

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I didn't quite understand the spiritual significance of Woof! at the time but looking back, of course it's there. I don't know what appealed to me specifically, perhaps the exotic element, I am unsure. I liked werewolf stories but prefer transforming into friendly creatures rather than snarly ones.

LOTR never interested me. Tolkein must be the most over-rated writer in history imo. Boring does not even describe it. Being a pacifist, I have never liked violence at all. Jungle Book was a bit sterilised, and highjacked by the Scout movement so has given me tainted memories of it.

AOFW was probably my favourite. Fox was definitely my favourite character and the whole fox hunt section was the first time I felt genuinely empathy, at least the first time I remember. I was a toucan at school for reasons unknown - it was a jungle play we did and I wanted to be something different. Always preferred traditional British countryside animals above anything else.

Furry has allowed me to express the dark side of my mind, that's true. It's also allowed me to express my sexual side comfortably as well. Most importantly, it has given me an audience with which to try things out, particularly my writings, which is something I have lacked up until now.

[rugbywolf.livejournal.com]

I remember being put onto furry stuff by the Redwall books, I used to play at being some of the characters in the woods near my parents' house when I was about 8. I have no idea when my pup play fetish started though, its an interesting one, and probably stems from the same root cause I suppose. I remember Woof though, it was a great show <3

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I never quite got the Redwall series. I guess I probably should have read them more. I used to play Inspector Gadget quite a lot as a kid, perhaps that's where the pup play thing started. I'm not really too sure where that came from really, at least on a sexual BDSM level. Woof! was great though, that may have played a small part in it.