The Imprinting Theory!!!

[Bluestone]

Well, it's been discussed before, but a poster at DS just reminded me of another source of my fetish. So, I thought I'd discuss this topic again from a slightly different angle.

My theory (and that of many others) is that we are not born with this fetish, but are imprinted at an early age by what we view in the media. I remember early television movies that I saw, the earliest of which was "The Houston Story" where a buxom blonde was shot by mobsters and her body tossed from a speeding car. It was an old black and white movie, but this scene has stuck with me for over 40 years.

The DS poster referred to the old Warren magazines, Creepy and Eerie. Ah yes, comic books and these magazines which featured stories similar to the banned 50's EC comics. I remember a beautiful, topless jungle girl being strangled to death as rendered by the iconic Frank Frazetta. I wonder how many here were influenced by this print media.

Perhaps there are even more sources of imprinting that explain our death fetish. I know that many people are into animation, and I also know that video games have a lot of violence and often involve female characters.

What was your earliest imprinting and what media source did it come from? I've heard a lot of posters refer to TV and movies, but not a lot have mentioned these other media on this board.

Blue

[astrokill]

For me it was two things happening at the same time. The first time was in, of all things, "Knight Rider", where a blonde bad girl falls off a truck and presumably fell off a cliff as the truck was speeding near a turn on the road. At the same time, my young mind (9 years old at the time), my family was watching a movie called "The House That Vanished" where a prostitute (I think) gets killed when she is stabbed while being topless. It was actually my first exposure to female nudity, and I think that pretty much sums up my fetish.

[elsullo]

Odd to say, but I disagree with the "imprinting" theory. I remember each early experience of encountering fetish-type scenarios, and I recall well how each one VERIFIED a sexual craving that I ALREADY felt! Television was relatively new when my folks finally got one, when I was four years old. I had seen no magazines or television and very few movies before that, and so had nothing to "imprint" me. My fetishes already existed before I found them shown in the early Fifties woman-in-peril serial shows, and it was simply a hot thrill to find my feelings verified by the media. Clearly, I was not alone in my kinky fascinations! But I am convinced that I possessed them before I ever encountered them in the media....................elsullo

[elsullo]

I should clarify: If I was imprinted by anything, it was from playing with other kids! We did not view any media, we just played with each other. I grew up as a baby-boomer in a Midwest military suburb next to farms and barns, that was teeming with mobs of innocent little kids running wild in the blocks. We all played games like "cowboys and Indians" "GIs versus Nazis" "rustlers ransoming cowgirls" etc. The girls LOVED to be captured and tied-up "helplessly" with jump-ropes and stolen clotheslines, menaced by bad guys with plastic guns and rubber knives and flimsy nooses, held for ransom as the center of attention, while the boys playing good or bad guys fought to either rescue them or keep them forever. The good guys always won and rescued the damsels, to receive hugs and kisses and gratitude, and accolades from the other boys. As television arrived and invaded our lives we acted out the scenes we saw in the serial-movies, everything from Robin Hood to Peter Pan to Wild West adventures. Cowgirls in barns with dangling ropes were my biggest adventures! WHAT FUN!

As an "adult" I just can't think of any reason NOT to keep playing at fantasy-peril games! Many women have fun at it too!..........................elsullo

[Bluestone]

I should clarify: If I was imprinted by anything, it was from playing with other kids! We did not view any media, we just played with each other. I grew up as a baby-boomer in a Midwest military suburb next to farms and barns, that was teeming with mobs of innocent little kids running wild in the blocks. We all played games like "cowboys and Indians" "GIs versus Nazis" "rustlers ransoming cowgirls" etc. The girls LOVED to be captured and tied-up "helplessly" with jump-ropes and stolen clotheslines, menaced by bad guys with plastic guns and rubber knives and flimsy nooses, held for ransom as the center of attention, while the boys playing good or bad guys fought to either rescue them or keep them forever. The good guys always won and rescued the damsels, to receive hugs and kisses and gratitude, and accolades from the other boys. As television arrived and invaded our lives we acted out the scenes we saw in the serial-movies, everything from Robin Hood to Peter Pan to Wild West adventures. Cowgirls in barns with dangling ropes were my biggest adventures! WHAT FUN!

As an "adult" I just can't think of any reason NOT to keep playing at fantasy-peril games! Many women have fun at it too!..........................elsullo

Great! An opportunity to explore some other theories. Firstly, Elsullo, I think your role play exposure may have contributed to your fetish. I just have a problem with the Fetish-At-Birth theory. I can't see being born with a pre-conceived notion such as erotic death fantasy long before puberty ever hit. Obviously, all humans are products of their environment to a great extent.

So, here is my second theory. I call it "The Forbidden Fruit" theory. In effect, most males with this fetish, and I dare say most females, do not hate women. In fact, it's been my experience that the males at least adore women. When I was growing up, we were taught not to be physical with girls. They were sweet and pretty. However, females were harmed. As a child, and even as an adult, I find it hard to comprehend how anyone could murder a beautiful woman such as Petra or Suzi. It is almost inconceivable to me. Is it perhaps possible that through our fantasies we are trying to identify with the aggressor, taste the forbidden fruit without hurting anyone, try to understand what it would be like to destroy someone who we cherish. I know this sounds twisted, but is it possible?

Thoughts?

Blue

[hardthrasher]

My theory is a very mundane version of imprinting. I think it's basically a neurochemical reaction. Whatever the "cocktail" of compounds released during sexual arousal (and I'm no expert here, but among the adrenaline/dopamine/testosterone/endorphins/etc.), I think a similar chemical reaction can take place before puberty. If it does, whatever it coincides with later on becomes associated with sexual arousal. It's as simple as that. Don't need to resort to Freudian psychoanalysis at all.

From an anecdotal and personal perspective, my experience was similar to elsullo's: I had a strong feeling of euphoria resulting from playing "army" and other toy gun games as a kid. Playing dead was an intensely pleasurable experience. It was only natural that I'd carry that forward to the teen years and begin associating it with girls...

[elsullo]

CONTROL is the forbidden fruit. Being in complete command of a woman is the fantasy. Taking utter possession of her very life and receiving her complete surrender in death is the ultimate proof of total mastery over her. We desire to keep that possession and control permanent, and we fantasize the various means of making enduring proof of our power over a woman---sending her to Eternity.


On a seperate note, the imprinting of those with an asphyxia fetish can indeed occur before birth! Many babies in the womb experience "exciting" times of having the umbilical cord wrapped around their necks, an occasionally distressing feeling that can be also be interpreted as "normal" and comforting. Many babies experience the excitement of oxygen deprivation during their birth experience, and this too can imprint a fascination with the feeling leading to a sexual arousal later. Asphyxia fascination crosses all cultures throughout history, implying that there is a deep, primal human experience at its root......................elsullo

[kevin67]

Hi,

Interestingly enough I am reading a book called "Genome" by an author named Ripley
which discusses, in an outline way,the nature of all our chromosomes. Besides the usual
biological diseases and the mechanisms by which the genetic code works, he addresses
certain types of behavior, like homosexuality and learning to speak. He believes that
our ability to learn the language we speak is more instinctive than just simply learned.
The words are taught, but we instinctly place them in the correct way to make phrases and sentences. An instinct, of course, is something you are born with and not learned. Homo-
sexuality has been linked somewhat to a difference in the chemial makeup by the brain.
These chemicals are dictated by the genes one inherits.

Before I bore you to death, let me get to my point. It is quite possible, if Ripley is
correct, that those of us who have the death fetish could possibly have a different chemical
makeup in our brains (due to our inherited genes) than those who do not have the fetish.
Thus the situations that trigger this fetish could be misconstrued as the reason we have
this fetish while it is really inborn. Of course there is no hard evidence that this is totally true and scientist have been arguing for years about which affects our behavior more, environment or inheritance. It doen't prove too much, but it does give some new way of
looking at our behavior.

BTW This does not mean we are sick in the head, we just have a different chemical makeup
determining our behavior.

[Bluestone]

I can tell you are a scientist, Kevin. Very interesting theory.

As for the imprinting theory, I can just remember specific movies that I saw during puberty, my thoughts about them, and the fact that those scenes are still locked within my memory banks. I still feel that such images are very powerful, especially to the developing mind and the developing sexual urges.

Anyone else care to share their thoughts on this very interesting subject... a subject that is crucial to understanding and coming to grips with our fetish.

Blue

[julieharvey]

I don't have te smarts for this, just my own experience. I do know we often seem to want to hurt the ones we care for most.

I was the youngest of four by several years, and the only girl. My brothers tormented me and them being older, it was horrible. I suffered. Then, one day when I was 15 they suddenly became ultra protective of me. Although this may have nothing to do with the way I feel about being a victim I am inclined to think I associate those who love me most being the ones who hurt me. And my death fantasies are part of my search for love. But what do I know?

Love
Julie

[Max5s]

Hi,

Interestingly enough I am reading a book called "Genome" by an author named Ripley
which discusses, in an outline way,the nature of all our chromosomes. Besides the usual
biological diseases and the mechanisms by which the genetic code works, he addresses
certain types of behavior, like homosexuality and learning to speak. He believes that
our ability to learn the language we speak is more instinctive than just simply learned.
The words are taught, but we instinctly place them in the correct way to make phrases and sentences. An instinct, of course, is something you are born with and not learned. Homo-
sexuality has been linked somewhat to a difference in the chemial makeup by the brain.
These chemicals are dictated by the genes one inherits.

Kevin,

Matt Ridley is a very engaging writer, but I think he is a bit out of his element when he makes his statements about language being instinctive. If you look carefully at the structure of different languages, you will see that they vary greatly. For example, some languages put the verbs at the end of the sentence, whereas others are like English. Russian has 6 declintions for its nouns, German I think has 4. Some don't use articles; others do. I think that it would be very hard to instinctively place words in the right place unless it was a learned process. I think that we instinctively try to communicate, and that we rapidly learn language patterns (especially when we are young), but I'm inclined to think that Ridley is speculating a bit too much. E.O. Wilson ran into a similar problem in his last chapter of Sociobiology.

[kevin67]

Hi Max,

You make a good point about the learning of language, but i thougt he makes an
interesting theory concerning our behavior and inheritance. They have certainly have found genetic connections in behavior involving criminality and homosexuality (at least in certain cases).The fight goes on in the world of science between genetics and environmental factors concerning our behavior.

A little offf topic, but Ripley also doesn't give a fuuly accurate description of inherited
blood types when he talks about their possible connection to certain disease immunity. He fails to mention those people whom are hybrids (Ai, Bi) having both the A type protein and the
O type blood (neither A or B type protein). However, I suppose it doen't matter (or maybe it
does), since he was connecting the protein types to the immunity from certain diseases. A lot
of what he does mention is based upon at least some evidence at the very least.

Sincerely Kevin67

[Geno]

Odd to say, but I disagree with the "imprinting" theory. I remember each early experience of encountering fetish-type scenarios, and I recall well how each one VERIFIED a sexual craving that I ALREADY felt! Television was relatively new when my folks finally got one, when I was four years old. I had seen no magazines or television and very few movies before that, and so had nothing to "imprint" me. My fetishes already existed before I found them shown in the early Fifties woman-in-peril serial shows, and it was simply a hot thrill to find my feelings verified by the media.

I am very skeptical of anyone who would that a deviation or fetish starts at birth. Whether you are gay, or homosexual, or heterosexual, it more of choice and conditioning as you grew up, then something you were born with. There is no gay gene, nor is there a death fetish gene. You learn and are conditioned to sexual fetishes and preferences as you grow up.

If we grew up watching on television the killing of women all the time, (like we did with men), it would not have resulted in this fetish we have today. Women laying dead all over the place would be just like so much cannon flotter. In reality we did not grow up seeing women getting killed on television. There are many people out there who as kids did not even believe a woman could be shot to death, because the scene was not actually view until we were much older. I know I am in that crowd.

Some of your first experiences in the death fetish, may have been something you saw on television, or it have may have been the little girl next door that played cops and robbers with you, and who dropped "dead" to the rummble of your toy machine gun, and the power sexual waves that went through your small body, that you just could not understand, and yet it was so pleasurable.

Take any potential sexual pleasure you want to, and if you were overexposed to it as you grew up , you are not going to find it very erotic today.

Geno

[Bluestone]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Geno on his points.

I believe that killings of women were rare in film when I was growing up. Little girls were to be treated with respect. For example, you saw women being slapped, but not hit with a closed fist in the early years of movies and television. So, combine the special status of girls/women as looking pretty and being off limits to physical fights with the rare occasions when the taboo was broken and they were actually killed. I think our young minds were shocked and aroused at the same time, and we sought out more of these rare scenes. As Geno would put it, they were the unmined gold that we were seeking.

Now, since I've been agreeing with Geno and actually paraphrasing him on this post, I have to run off now and book an appointment with my shrink

Blue

[Max5s]

Kevin,

Ridley is a great science writer and certainly has the education to qualify him as a science generalist. Genetics has become a very complicated subject since the advances in molecular biology that came about in the 80s and 90s (and even in this decade). Many recent observations suggest that certain behavioral patterns are inherited, and to a certain extent, I'm willing to concede that point. What concerns me; however, are the observations that hint at environmental triggers. As an organism develops, genes are turned on and off in a very precise manner. The environment can induce changes in this process which may lead to the behaviors we observe (greatly challenging the standard genetic argument). Methylation and acetylation of the histone tails on a nucleosome are a classic example. Depending on when, where and to what extent the effect takes place can significantly alter development and produce changes in behavior associated with a deficiency or excess of a particular gene product.

It sounds like you realy enjoy Ridley's book. That being the case, I would recommend
When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish by Lisa Chiu
and both books out by Sean Carroll The Making of the Fitist and Endless Forms Most Beautiful.

All three are a bit more mechanistic, and Chiu's book spends a few pages on imprinting.