Have you ever felt sexual attraction to tattoos and body piercings? If you did, then you should know that you are not the only one. Many people feel like that and it is called stigmatophilia. For many years people have been creating various types of body art by using their body as canvas.
Having tattoos and piercings is also a part of many ancient cultural traditions like Maori and Inuit. Apart from that, people have been using tattoos to share stories and events of their lives. Moreover, body modifications are seen as a symbol of masculinity by many people.
Thus, many people are drawn to men and women with tattoos and, for example, nipple piercings on their bodies. In this article, let’s dive deep into this fetish of stigmatophilia and understand what drives people crazy by seeing tattoos on someone’s body.
Understanding Stigmatophilia
In this day and age, getting a tattoo or a piercing has become very common. With the popularity of tattoos, several incidences of stigmatophilia have come to light. However, general awareness about stigmatophilia is still lacking a lot.
People with stigmatophilia will be attracted to a person with tattoos or piercings instinctively. To get sexually aroused, they just need a form of body art. However, that doesn’t mean those people will be touching or kissing those parts of another person’s body which are covered with tattoos.
These people just get a sense of attraction with people having tattoos and body piercings. Also, many people are attracted to either tattoos or piercings and not both. Now, if they see a person without tattoos and piercings, they will not feel aroused.
Is stigmatophilia a type of paraphilia?
Before you understand whether stigmatophilia is truly a kind of paraphilia, you need to understand what a paraphilia is. It is a sexual behaviour pattern where a person gets aroused through usual things, situations, activities or even individuals.
People with paraphilia will require a certain element or context to be sexually aroused. As per many experts, while getting tattoos and piercings, people do suffer a lot and due to those sufferings, those with stigmatophilia get attracted to those people with tattoos and piercings.
Because of this, many experts think that stigmatophilia is a kind of paraphilia. Most people with stigmatophilia empathize with people who get tattoos and piercings.
Is stigmatophilia a kind of fetish?
The view of stigmatophilia is different among experts. As you have seen previously, some experts believe that stigmatophilia is a paraphilia. However, other experts have a different opinion on stigmatophilia as they think it is a form of fetish.
These experts think that just like some people get aroused by shoes, lingerie, feet, big hips, masks, and full lips, people with stigmatophilia get aroused by tattoos and piercings. Thus, stigmatophilia is nothing but a fetish and not paraphilia.
Experts believe stigmatophilia is a fetish and also think that the sexual attraction to tattoos and piercings from these people is not a necessary thing to have satisfactory sexual encounters. However, if any form of body art is present, the sexual pleasure becomes even more intense.
Stigmatophilia and sexual perversion
While learning about stigmatophilia, you may start to think that it is a type of sexual perversion and that people having this are mentally ill. But, you should know that stigmatophilia is not a mental illness. The main reason is that people with stigmatophilia don’t harm other people.
If you want to categorize a certain issue as a mental illness or psychological disorder, here are two conditions it has to fulfil;
- The person having the disorder should be causing harm to other people
- The person with the disorder will go through persistent distress and anxiety
People having stigmatophilia will not cause any sort of harm to other people. They won’t harm the body part (tattoos or piercings) that they are attracted to. However, one has to admit that different people will behave differently when it comes to sexual attraction.
However, if you talk about it in general, people with stigmatophilia will not be harming others and thus, you cannot categorize stigmatophilia as a type of sexual deviation or perversion. Also, it is not a psychological problem.
What makes tattoos and piercings attractive to people with stigmatophilia?
If you want to know the root cause of sexual attraction to tattoos and piercings of people with stigmatophilia, then you have to dissect it in two ways. First, you have to understand the aesthetic part of the body art and second, you need to decipher what it tries to convey.
Aesthetics
You should know that tattoos and piercings are not modern fashion. They were there even in ancient times. There have been many historical contexts of body art. In ancient civilizations like the ones of Maoris and Inuits, tattoos and piercings were a big part of certain rituals and rites. Romans used various body accessories to showcase courage and virility. Thus, from ancient times, people were aesthetically pleased by tattoos and piercings.
Self-Expression
Yes, aesthetics is a key reason for getting tattoos. However, one cannot ignore the inner meaning that each tattoo has. Every tattoo on a person’s body conveys something. It is a medium through which a lot of the character of a person can be deciphered. So, when you think that people with stigmatophilia are attracted to body art, in many cases, they are into the meaning and content that the body art is conveying to them.
How common is stigmatophilia?
It is very hard to tell whether stigmatophilia among people is common or not. However, according to some piercing experts and tattoo artists, stigmatophilia is more common in people than you can think. And, some of the researches that were made on paraphilia indicates that paraphilia is quite more common for men than women as men have a higher sex drive than women.
The Bottom Line
Finally, men and women can have sexual experiences in various ways and stigmatophilia is one of them. If you have a sexual attractiveness to tattoos and piercings, then you should explore this. However, make sure you explore your attraction to tattoos and piercings safely and with consent.
Tattoos and piercings are super attractive to me, and I’ve been a part alt/punk/emo communities since… forever. On myself and other people, I love them. Five piercings, two tattoos, and I want more~