Piny on the desire for the exotic
piny writes about people who have a fetish for transsexuals. And this line leapt out at me, as having a broader application:
There’s also this idea that desire is by definition revolutionary, that wanting to fuck an oddity is somehow a break with tradition. Desire for the outsiders is nothing new.
Discussion ensues in the comments as to what is the difference between having a type of person that you tend to be attracted to and making a fetish out of a particular type of person – objectifying people who fit your type and treating them as if they’re interchangeable.
UPDATE: OK, I just noticed that Eve Tushnet, in a recent blogwatch, linked this response to her woman-as-icon post. And I’m going to include the link in this post, because, even though woman-as-icon has nothing to do with desire for the exotic as such, I suppose the kind of transsexual fetish that Piny talks about could be a kind of transsexual-as-icon thing, not entirely unlike the more traditional woman-as-icon thing.