Paraphillia/Fetishes

Paraphilia are not fetishes although fetishes can be paraphilia.

So What are paraphilia?
- basically sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not normative.
- can also be described as recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors that involve non-human objects (fetishes), the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, children, non-consenting persons. There are a ton of examples of paraphilia.

Exhibitionism: the recurrent urge or behavior to expose one's genitals to an unsuspecting person, or to perform sexual acts that can be watched by others.
Fetishism: the use of inanimate objects to gain sexual excitement. Partialism refers to fetishes specifically involving nonsexual parts of the body.
Frotteurism: recurrent urges of behavior of touching or rubbing against a nonconsenting person.
Pedophilia: strong sexual attraction to prepubescent children.
Sexual Masochism: the recurrent urge or behavior of wanting to be humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer for sexual pleasure.
Sexual Sadism: the recurrent urge or behavior involving acts in which the pain or humiliation of a person is sexually exciting.
Transvestic fetishism: arousal from wearing "clothing associated with members of the opposite sex." differs from cross-dressing for entertainment or other purposes that do not involve sexual arousal.
Voyeurism: the recurrent urge or behavior to observe an unsuspecting person who is naked, disrobing, or engaging in sexual activities, or who is engaging in activities usually considered to be of a private nature.

A lot of debatable topics revolve around these i.e. lowering age of consent (pedophilia) legalizing sex dungeons (BDSM), sex with animals, corpses etc.

NOTE: There is a distinction between a Paraphilia and a Paraphilic DISORDER = severe paraphilias that distress or impair people or cause them to do harm to others are validly regarded as disorders. The former does not require psychiatric treatment.

For an extensive list of paraphilia (stuff like trees, stuffed toys, cars, amputations, shit, piss etc.) head over to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paraphilias or the other page here.

A fetish is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish (i.e. foot fetish) while the person who has a fetish for that object/situation is a fetishist.
A way to picture it would be like if a person has a mental obsession with cowboys, their partner could dress up as a cowboy. That's role-playing. It could be anything i.e. nurses, teachers etc. Another way to see it would be an obsession for particular objects or materials such as leather, latex, rubber items, individual body parts etc.

Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the characteristics of a desirable mate. For example, according to this theory, imprinting on shoes or boots would be the cause of shoe fetishism. It is believed that fetishes are imprinted as a result of an experience during childhood. For example, somebody who was sexually abused at as a child might be obsessed with touching others. Transitional objects aka comfort object, security blanket (could be a teddy bear, blanket those sort of things) and childish actions (sucking thumbs, cuddling toys) are the origin of many adult behavior/fetishes. Some argue that a lack of parental love leads to a child projecting its affection onto inanimate objects. Someone who feels uncomfortable with their sexual desire for a real person may therefore substitute a fetish as a result of displacement (defense mechanism)

If a sexual fetish causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life, it is diagnosable as a paraphilia in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders). However, many people embrace their fetish rather than attempting treatment to rid themselves of it, especially in an age where they can easily find communities of like-minded people via the internet.

Some psychologists such as Hirschfeld believe that nearly everyone has special interests and thus suffers from a healthy kind of fetishism, while only detaching and overvaluing of a single feature resulted in pathological (physical or mental disease) fetishism. Females present sexual stimuli by highlighting body parts, clothes or accessories; males react to them.