Dear Dan:

I’m a girl with a few questions, so I’ll start with the simplest and work up:

1) Can a person have more then one fetish, or are they called something else if you have 2+? Completely unconnected fetishes, like lingerie on girls, watching gay men have sex, and bondage (amongst others).

2) How common is it for women/girls to have fetishes, in more concrete terms then “less then men”? (I’m a high school girl, by the way.)

3) Is watching porn from a young age the reason I have multiple fetishes, or is it the other way around?

4) And the biggest one: One of my fetishes happens to be gynecology, in a bondage-y kind of way. Not because it is forced, but because you’re allowing someone to do that to you, and you have to trust them a lot. However: like many people, I don’t want anyone other then a trusted partner to know about the details of my fetishes, and the time is coming where I will eventually have to get a gynecological exam. Is there a way to prevent myself from becoming aroused? I feel like I would be aroused even if I was embarrassed, especially since someone would have their hands in my vagina. The gynecologist would know, and I know they gossip about patients, despite privacy laws. My friend’s aunt told her about the strangest cases she’d ever had, including a woman who had managed to get two meatballs and an egg stuck in her vagina, and had to go in to get them taken out.

Weird Excitable Teenager

My response after the jump...

You may be excitable, but you’re not weird. Let’s take questions 1 through 3 first, since they’re connected. People can have lots and lots of fetishes, and those fetishes can be similar or related or not. I’m not sure I’d classify yours as fetishes, as much as turn-ons. Lingerie on girls, watching gay men have sex, and bondage turn you on. Plenty of people have these same turn-ons, and plenty of girls and women have fetishes. Don’t be so concerned about why you have these turn-ons or what they mean. Porn doesn’t give people fetishes, but it can give you a language to talk about what arouses you, what you fantasize about, or what you might like to do. Your gyno fetish is actually a pretty common one, which is why when you get older and go to your first BDSM play party, you’re likely to see a gynecological table in a medical-themed room (something to look forward to!).

There isn’t a way to stop your body from getting aroused if it wants to be aroused. However, many signs of arousal will not raise any red flags for your doctor. For example, you will definitely not be the first patient to have a wet pussy (some people’s pussies are wet under a lot of different circumstances). If you have an increased heart rate, that could be chalked up to nervousness or anxiety. Even if you have an orgasm during your pelvic exam, you would not be the first. You’d probably have to have a screaming orgasm to make anyone in the room blink. But there is also another scenario possible: fantasies when presented in real life don’t always produce the same results. You may be totally turned on by the idea of a gynecological exam, but when it actually happens in a doctor’s office (rather than with a lover in a sexy outfit in a scene you’ve designed), it might not be that sexy at all. Doctors have seen pretty much everything, and ethical medical professionals absolutely do not gossip about their patients—it’s actually against the law. Oh, and don’t ever put meatballs or eggs in your vagina.