Not sure if this should be posted in an already existing thread but sure look it. The difference between ‘fetishizing fat women’ and ‘it’s just a preference’. Both of these terms are just often interchangeably with regards to this ‘community’. Is there really a difference? It’s like you are caught in limbo. It’s like if you like a fat chick and her size you are fetishizing her and if you don’t like her due to her size you are fatphobic. They don’t want to be loved in spite of their body but they also don’t want their fat to be a contributor to their attractiveness. But to me it is just another physical characteristic of their body such as their face, boobs or butts whatever that makes them attractive. Why is it that someone can be attracted to someone else based on their face, genitalia or height etc it is perceived as being completely fine but as soon as it’s fat it is now something dark and creepy and fetishizing. Why can’t I like big women for their bodies? And their fat plays a major role in that attraction. I can’t help it, this wasn’t something I chose. I’m not attracted to fat women because I think ‘they’re easy’ or some shit like ‘fat chicks give the best head’ or whatever I am just physically attracted to them.

You might often hear the statement from these fat positive accounts on insta or some shit which say that fat is ‘morally neutral’ or fat isn’t evil or bad it’s just a thing and I agree. This idea that they are eating all the food and they are greedy is a load of crap. Sure they eat a load but so do athletes and bodybuilders they just burn it off, no one perceives them as greedy. And so if it is ‘just a thing’ why can’t I be attracted to it? According to a Mr Google search I did, the difference between a fetish and a preference is basically if your attraction to someone is conditional (i.e. is fat or not) then it’s a fetish but if it is not then it is a preference.

My question is, if for example since this is something one cannot control, a gay or straight person not being attracted to someone because of their sex (aka a physical characteristic, genitalia, chromosomes etc). If their attraction to someone is conditional, i.e. the straight person is only attracted to the opposite sex and the gay person is attracted only to the same sex, are they then not fetishizing the people they are attracted to (according to the definition of fetishization) (with this being physical attraction, not emotional). For me it doesn’t have to be a load but like anything from slightly chubby to like USSBBW, but there does have to be some there. Are people who don’t like fat chicks fetishizing thinner women? This sounds ridiculous saying it out loud. Also I get people who aren’t into fat chicks seeing people who are into them as weird but its like a whole other layer when fat chicks even think you are creepy for liking them. You can’t win it seems. Unless you just go along with it and say ‘it’s just a preference’ when you have only been with fat girls and only ever been attracted to fat girls and will continue to only be attracted to fat girls but as long as you only say it’s a preference then you can get away with it. Am I talking out of my ass here or what? I’m curious to hear yer thoughts. From both men who are into bigger women and bigger women themselves if possible.

Yeah it’s a distinction without a difference. There has never been a meaningful or conclusive debate on this topic, and even if there was, nothing would change. For all intents and purposes, they’re interchangeable terms. Anybody who is okay with a dude being sexually attracted to flab, but is offended at the thought of that attraction being a fetish is huffing copium.

Don’t concern yourself with the complaints of those types of people. Just avoid the word fetish and move on with your life.

"Fetish: a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc."

In our case, I take that to mean someone who's fixated on, say, weight and measurements, or eating and gaining, or too-tight clothing, or a fat woman getting exhausted climbing stairs, etc etc as opposed to the woman herself.

Fetishism also implies mental illness, because these things were first defined by psychologists, and many fetishes are in the shrink's bible, the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

To me a preference would just mean you prefer bigger women and don't particularly care about that anciliary stuff.

As for "permission," any time you're into anything outside the norm you're gonna get shit for it. I listened to punk in high school and had guys actually picking fights with me for it. Look at how people who dress oddly are ostrasized, too, or people who want to switch or blur gender roles.

When it comes to sex people get even more protective of the status quo, because it's so visceral — look at all the assholes who suddenly become Great Moral Defenders of the Family when it comes to same-sex couples. Or the freak-out over trans rights. (Not looking for a debate on this btw, just stating an example.)

Then add fat to the mix and people get agitated because fat is considered a moral failing (most places) and so being attracted to it means you're attracted to degeneracy.

Another facet to this is degrees of fatness. Maybe you can "prefer" a woman up to 220 pounds or so, but "prefer" one who's 400 and you're a fetishist.

I've actually had this conversation with a (male) friend. He'd figured out I was into bigger women (based on my partners) and I guess the women I'd look at when we were together, and he "understood" it. But when I said I was attracted to a 300+ lb mutual friend he was shocked. "Like, even her side rolls and stuff?" he asked, and when I said Yes he was dumbfounded.

A big part of the problem is that the word "fetish" is loosely defined. Here are some random examples from the first few pages of google:

>Webster's: "a need or desire for an object, body part, or activity for sexual excitement"

>Oxford: "a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc."

>Dictionary.com: "any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation."

>Cambridge: "a sexual interest in an object or a part of the body other than the sexual organs"

This is a mess. Webster's says a fetish is any "need" for an object, body part or activity for sexual excitement, apparently without regard for if that part of the body is the genitals. Oxford says it's only a fetish if the attraction is to an "abnormal degree", which is ambiguous at best. Dictionary says fixation on any nongenital part of the body is a fetish (I guess if you're a boobs or ass guy you have a fetish.) Cambridge is stricter and calls interest in anything except sex organs a fetish, regardless of degree (if you like women with pretty faces you have a fetish.)

This leaves a huge amount of gray area. There are certainly some things that 100% qualify as a fetish under all definitions, such as attraction to body pillows. But if you dive deeper and start talking about attraction to certain body parts and types, then you have no idea.

Further complicating this is the sliding definition of "sexual attraction to fat women". What counts can range from being more attracted to a woman that's 30-40 pounds overweight but still able to be attracted to thin women, being almost exclusively sexually attracted to women 300 pounds or more with no other qualifiers, being attracted to the idea of a woman being self indulgent to the point of being very overweight (without the feeding aspect), being attracted to the idea of feeding a woman until she puts on hundreds of pounds, being attracted to people who are fat hedonistic slobs who defy the laws of polite society, to the extremes of death feederism.

If both sides of the equation, the definition of fetish and the definition of the attraction to large women, are ambiguous, then what hope do we have of concrete definitions?



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With all that said, here's my best shot.

A preference is where a specific physical body type or feature is preferred for sexual arousal. Height, weight, skin color, hair color, body shape, facial structure, etc. This is regardless of how weak or strong the preference is.

A kink is an attraction to something outside of the range of a preference that doesn't need to be there, but adds to the sexual experience. If it's easier for you to be aroused to somebody intelligent, somebody with a high voice, feeding somebody eclairs, etc, that's a sexual kink.

A fetish is the same as a kink, except that it MUST be present for sexual arousal.

Under these definitions, I classify the attraction to fat women itself as a preference. Fat is a body type, and if preferring big boobs or red hair is a preference, then preferring more fat tissue is also a preference. This holds true no matter how fat we're talking. The base attraction to fat women itself is a preference.

Anything outside of that base attraction, be it feedism, attraction to slobbish behaviors, being squashed, etc, either falls into the category of a kink or preference. It's a kink if it's enjoyed as part of the bigger picture but not completely necessary for sexual gratification. It's a fetish if you can't get off without that parameter. For example, if you can only nut to the idea of a 350 pound lady being stuffed full of dessert that you fed her, then you have a preference for fat women with an associated feeder fetish.

The real question here isn't "is being into fat chicks a fetish," it's a definitional argument about what the word "fetish" actually means. And that's a fundamentally pointless argument. The meaning of a word is its use in a particular context. t. Ludwig Wittgenstein

I have no problem calling what I have a fetish, but I don't use the term in casual conversation because women in particular hear the word "fetish" and immediately think "creepy, objectifying, nonconsensual." Personally, calling it a "preference" feels like a cop-out (I don't "prefer" fat women, I can't get it up for anyone else), but if it makes the person I'm talking to more comfortable with the idea "this guy is attracted to fat women," that's what I'll use.

>>12966
> t. Ludwig Wittgenstein

lol, /gen/ continues to surprise me. Last place I expected anyone to bring up Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language.

>>12953
>Yeah it’s a distinction without a difference

I agree. As you and others have said, there's no "objective" definition of what a fetish is. It's just a word people have used to describe sexual desires that are considered unusual, abnormal, or just really specific. And those distinctions are all rooted in culture and individual personality, not biology or anything like that.

>>12961
>A preference is where a specific physical body type or feature is preferred for sexual arousal. Height, weight, skin color, hair color, body shape, facial structure, etc. This is regardless of how weak or strong the preference is.

>A kink is an attraction to something outside of the range of a preference that doesn't need to be there, but adds to the sexual experience. If it's easier for you to be aroused to somebody intelligent, somebody with a high voice, feeding somebody eclairs, etc, that's a sexual kink.

>A fetish is the same as a kink, except that it MUST be present for sexual arousal.

>Under these definitions, I classify the attraction to fat women itself as a preference. Fat is a body type, and if preferring big boobs or red hair is a preference, then preferring more fat tissue is also a preference. This holds true no matter how fat we're talking. The base attraction to fat women itself is a preference.

If we're going to try to find a way to keep these distinctions and make them consistent, this feels like as good a way as any. For me personally, and I think this is basically what you said, "preference" is just being more attracted to fatter people than thinner ones, whereas "kink" or "fetish" includes more specific behaviors (so, feedism, squashing, slob, etc., as you said). So maybe, for me, it comes down to the difference between being attracted to what a person looks like vs. what they do.

That said, I do often wonder how many people have a preference for fat people but AREN'T into feedism. I know the Venn diagram doesn't completely overlap here, but I have to think there's a decent amount of overlap.

>>13038

>lol, /gen/ continues to surprise me

You never know who has this kink. I'm an ex-academic of no particular distinction, but I know for a fact because I dated his ex that there's a tenured prof in a fairly prestigious social science department who's an SSBBW lover.

Regarding this perennial thread topic, ya boy Ludwig Dubya really did have the final word on why definitional arguments of this type are pointless and meaningless, so I always gotta drop a wittgenstein.jpg when the subject comes up.

>>13058
That sounds juicy. Anyone famous? Or is the school just famous?

>>13063

It's a well known school and the department has a couple of superstar profs, but this guy wasn't anyone famous. She didn't have anything bad to say about him, just that they had dated and it didn't work out.