Fetishization is super dehumanising. Basically it’s when you have a creepy fascination with a category of people who are marginalised for traits you don’t have. It’s like seeing real people as really interesting animals or like abstract concepts or a porn category.
You
can fetishize people for their orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, mental
illness, religion, for being trans – basically any trait people are marginalised
for, other people will use that marginalisation to fetishise them. Often
the fetishisation is sexual, sometimes not. (Academics and health professionals, when working with populations they’re not a part of, can and do fetishize their subjects/patients.)Fetishisation involves:
- “othering” a person for having traits you don’t – thinking of yourself as “normal” and them as something other than “normal” (exotification falls under this – “she’s hot because she’s different/exotic!”)
- reducing
the complex experiences of marginalised individuals into homogenized stereotypes and
tidy little stories to be enjoyed by people not marginalised for
the same thing- seeing those stereotypes/stories as a litmus test for whether someone is “really” part of their own culture, race, etc.
- seeing people or groups of people as
symbols, abstract ideas, aesthetic accessories, sexual objects, props
for your self-aggrandising “saviour” role, etc., instead of as complex
human beings with autonomy- creepy fascination that reduces real people to a “hobby” or “interest” for a privileged person
Basically
it’s an insidious form of objectification that relies on extreme
othering to make it seem okay, and it’s extremely disrespectful and
harmful.
